


i believe in us

by Cafelesbian



Series: tell me how to breathe in and feel no hurt [10]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Mostly Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:40:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 22,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22654867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cafelesbian/pseuds/Cafelesbian
Summary: a collection of short one shots and tumblr requests from this universe
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: tell me how to breathe in and feel no hurt [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1428403
Comments: 78
Kudos: 108





	1. i will take good care of you

**Author's Note:**

> can you tell i'm running out of lyrics from this song to title things as lol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anon: What about something from the time, early in their reunion, when Bucky got sick? What did he have, how sick was he, how did Steve take care of him? Maybe Bucky's trying to hide that he's sick in the first place because he thinks it will make Steve throw him out that much quicker, maybe Steve's Steve worried that it was something really serious, like pneumonia or TB or something?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during chapter 5 of tmhtb

Bucky knows he’s getting sick three days before Steve does. He has taken care of himself through fevers and viruses and nights where he can’t stop getting sick, so he vows to push through this one alone, too. He doesn’t want to burden Steve with this, too, doesn’t want to be even needier, even more of a leech off of everything he has, to make him angry, so he pounds tylenol and waits for it to go away.

But it doesn’t, and the longer he waits, the worse he feels. He thinks it might be the flu. He wakes up one morning feeling like someone has lit a fire in his head and allowed it to spread through the rest of his body. He presses his face into his hand. The panic has started, unfurling itself quick and familiar in his chest, this _he’s going to be angry what if you get him sick what if he kicks you out_ , and nausea curdles in his stomach that has nothing to do with the illness.

Steve is on a run, so Bucky splashes water on his face and takes a few breaths and tries to pull it together. He fails, and when Steve gets a look at him, he frowns.

“You feelin’ okay?” Steve asks him.

“Yeah, fine,” Bucky says instantly. Steve lifts a hand, and he flinches, brief, immediate terror sparking in his head and dying out when he realizes Steve was only going to check his temperature. He looks away.

“Sorry,” Steve says, sounding guilty. Bucky bites his lip. “Sorry, I just wanted to check.” Not looking at him, Bucky nods. When Steve touches his forehead, his hand is cool and gentle.

“Jesus, Buck. You’re burning up.”

“It’s fine, Steve,” Bucky tells him, so pathetically afraid that he’ll have upset Steve.

“Bucky, you look like hell,” Steve tells him, “lie down, I’ll make you some tea and orange juice and stuff to eat. I’m just working here today so it’s not a problem.”

Too tired and relieved to argue, Bucky nods.

***

An hour later, when he’s confident Bucky is asleep, Steve steps into the studio and calls Natasha.

“Hey,” Steve says. “Um. Bucky’s sick.”

A pointed silence. “What do you mean?”

“He’s got a fever.”

“Oh,” she says, clearly relieved. “So not really sick, then.”

“Well,” Steve says, dropping his voice, “I don’t know, do you think it could be—could be something serious?”

“I don’t know, Steve,” Nat says, “let me consult my fucking medical degree.”

“I’m just asking!”

“Steve, it’s a fever. I’m sure he’s fine.”

“But what if—what if it’s something—what if it’s hypothermia, or TB, or meningitis, or—or a fucking… sexually transmitted thing, I don’t—I wanna make sure he’s okay, but I don’t wanna make him feel—”

“Rogers,” she says, exasperated. “I’m sure he’ll tell you if there’s a chance it’s something bad.”

“Actually, I’m sure he won’t, Nat,” Steve snaps.

“Jesus Christ, Steve. Maybe you two should communicate like adults for once in your life.”

“Yeah, like, ‘hey, I know you were probably raped and attacked, but if you could give me your medical history that’d be great.’”

“God, Steve. Like ‘I’m obviously in love with you and will support you no matter what happened to you.’ Jesus.” She pauses. “I have to go. Just… he’ll be fine, yeah? Let me know what happens.”

She hangs up, and Steve pinches the bridge of his nose.

***

“It’s not, um.” Bucky’s voice is thick already from fever, but the shame is unmissable. “I used to go to the free, um, clinics and get tested. And—and I went to one, since, um, I’ve been here. It’s not—it’s not that.” He won’t look at Steve.

“Okay,” Steve says softly, utterly relieved. “If—if it was, um. It wouldn’t be something to be ashamed of, Buck.”

He kneads his fingers over the counter and doesn’t answer. Steve lets it go for now.

“You sure you’re alright?”

Bucky looks up, exhausted. “It’s just a fever, Steve. I’ve survived worse.”

Steve bites his lip. “I just want you to be comfortable.”

Bucky smiles weakly. “‘M good.”

“Tell me if you need anything?”

“Jesus, Steve. I’m fine.”

***

The nightmares are worse during these days, Steve realizes. Bucky wakes him up whimpering and shivering on the living room floor twice the first night and when Steve gently shakes him out of it, it takes him longer to calm down. He is not talking about it, and Steve doesn’t know how to get him to.

“Sorry,” Bucky whispers the third night. Steve pushes a mug of tea in front of him and shakes his head.

“No need to be sorry,” he says easily.

Bucky swallows. “You don’t need to take care of me. I’m fine.”

Steve bites his lip. _I want to take care of you when you’re sick, and when you’re sad, and when you’re scared even though you haven’t told me why, and I want to take care of you when you’re happy most of all, and never stop doing that._ “Consider it reimbursement for all the black eyes you iced for me.”

Bucky chokes out a laugh and sips his tea.

***

The last night, Bucky is asleep in the guest room and Steve is getting ready for bed when Bucky begins screaming, choked, terrified sounds. Steve drops the toothpaste and throws Bucky’s door open and kneels beside him. He’s curled in on himself, shaking and gasping, and Steve’s vision quivers with the awfulness of it.

“Hey, hey, Buck, you’re okay.” He doesn’t wake up. “It’s okay, you’re okay, it’s just a bad dream.” Steve lays a hand on his back, and gets him to sit up, blinking and breathing too hard. “You okay, Buck?” he adds gently, when Bucky looks at him.

Bucky nods in a way that suggests he is anything but okay. Steve sits beside him on the bed and rubs his back, and Bucky leans into his shoulder and begins to cry and Steve takes that as permission to hug him so he does, and as always, he is struck by how thin Bucky is and right now, his body is too warm and is trembling too hard and Steve wants to say he’s sorry but he’s too worried to manage the words.

He gets him to calm down, eventually, and when Bucky says he won’t be able to sleep, they watch Titanic. Bucky does, in fact, fall asleep, his head on Steve’s chest, the closest they have been since he arrived here, and Steve wants to kiss his hair but he doesn’t, and when he slips under the worry hasn’t subsided.


	2. all i need is you next to me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anon: for the tmhbt prompt requests maybe something from when they were in high school i feel like i remember in the story it mentioning bucky had bad anxiety or something so maybe bucky has an panic attack about his dad or something and steve comforts him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from marys song by taylor swift which is the ultimate stevebucky song for this universe imo

Steve knows Bucky better than anyone knows anything. He is sure of that. He knows Bucky’s favorite movies and tv shows and books and songs, he knows his favorite ice cream flavors and sodas and candy bars. He knows the smile Bucky puts on when he’s talking to someone he doesn’t want to be, he knows the specific tilt of his head he does when someone has said something that annoyed him, he knows the curve of his handwriting. He knows the shade of Bucky’s hair and skin and lips well enough that he could—and has—created them into shades of paint. He knows he talks faster when he’s speaking about something that excites him and he knows that he is self conscious about sharing his writing but thrives on being able to talk about it and being complimented on it. He knows that Bucky wants them to adopt a big dog and a small one, and also a cat, and also two kids (and yeah, Steve wants it too). He knows what turns him on and how to make his cheeks flush and where and how he likes to be kissed when they make love. 

Knowing someone that intensely, though, means knowing all of them. Steve knows it devastates him that he can’t tell his parents he’s gay, even though he pretends it doesn’t. Steve knows that he the day, inevitably, that he and Bucky get a place together or get engaged and they do have to tell their parents, their reaction is going to hurt Bucky more than he cares to admit, even to himself. He knows that Bucky is insecure about the amputation and when people stare at him, it makes him anxious. A lot of things do. Steve knows that too, that Bucky probably has diagnosable anxiety, although his family certainly won’t be writing any checks for therapy and anyway, he doesn’t know if Bucky would go for it if they did. It’s usually manageable, and it doesn’t make Steve love him any less. It only makes him wish he could help more. He has witnessed Bucky during what he realized after was a panic attack more than once, and each time, he’s held him and talked to him about stupid, distracting things and waited until his breath evened out or he stopped crying. It’s not frequent, but it’s happened enough times, usually but not exclusively over something his dad did or said.

(Steve knows he’d very much like to hit George Barnes.)

Right now, they’re sprawled out on Bucky’s living room sofa doing homework. Bucky is leaning back against Steve, curled up between his legs, Steve’s chin propped on top of his head. 

“You know what I was thinking about today?” Bucky says. Steve hums in response. “If our families were rich, we’d be in Catholic school.”

“Jesus,” Steve says, “you’re probably right.”

“I’m always right.”

Steve snorts. “I wouldn’t mind getting you into a sexy schoolgirl outfit.”

Bucky flushes. “ _Steve.”_

_“Bucky.”_

Bucky laughs and kisses him. “Perv,” he says, breaking away for a moment to do so.

“Only for you,” Steve answers. Bucky giggles.

“Fucking weirdo.” Bucky kisses his cheek and goes back to reading. They’re in the same English class, so they’re reading the same book, although Bucky is admittedly more serious and smarter about it than Steve is, so while he analyzes Sylvia Plath, Steve kisses his neck to try and distract him.

“You’re so fucking annoying,” Bucky says finally, and closes the book aside to turn around and kiss him on the mouth.

Steve grins. “Say it again, babe.”

Bucky laughs and replies, “I’m never gonna graduate if I keep doing work with you.”

“Good. Drop out and sell short stories and I’ll sell paintings. We can do it in a little town in Maine, we can probably get a house there for the cost of one New York apartment.”

“We have a test tomorrow, dumbass.”

“Damn,” Steve teases, “if only I had a hot, literary-inclined boyfriend who I could copy off of.”

“Hm,” Bucky says, fake contemplative, “if you did, what would he get out of the deal?”

“My undying love.”

Bucky snorts. Steve grins. Without saying anything, he pulls Bucky a little closer, kisses his cheek sloppily, and then says, “I’ll show you what you get.”

Bucky quirks an eyebrow and tosses the book aside. He shifts around so he’s facing Steve, full weight leaned comfortably on his chest, and kisses him, warm and familiar. Steve grins into it and reaches under his waistband.

They don’t hear the door pull open, but they catch the graceless beat of footsteps half a second before it’s too late and they jump apart. Bucky swallows and smooths his hair down, and Steve sits up and throws an arm over the back of the couch, going for nonchalance, coughing a little. Bucky’s shirt is riding up, and Steve gestures for him to tug it down. He does, looking pale. It’s Bucky’s dad. 

“You’re home early,” Bucky says, a little breathlessly. He’s bouncing his leg. Steve bites his lip.

“Not really,” George replies, raising an eyebrow. Bucky glances at the clock and shrugs.

“We were just about to go to Steve’s,” Bucky says, shooting him a brief, wordless look. Steve goes along with it. “I’ll be back after dinner.”

George glances at Steve. “Good to see you, kid.”

“You, too,” Steve agrees vaguely, gathering his things. “Take care, George.” Bucky waits for him to sling his bag over his shoulder, and then pulls the door open and walks out a little too briskly. Steve doesn’t touch him until they have crossed the street and gotten inside. 

“You okay?” he asks, dumping his bag on the floor and turning to Bucky. Bucky nods and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“What if he—what if he saw—”

“He didn’t, Buck,” Steve says firmly. “I promise.”

Bucky swallows hard. “How are you sure?”

Steve runs a hand through his hair. “‘Cause if he did, we’d both be getting exorcised right now.”

“That’s not funny,” Bucky snaps. Then he slumps back and scrubs his hand down his face.

“Baby,” Steve says quietly, “c’mere.” He reaches one arm out, and Bucky lifts his gaze and then buries himself against Steve’s chest, shoulders trembling, soft and exhausted, his breathing short and panicky. Steve holds him for a good minute, until he feels the quivering begin to subside and his breaths begin to ease back to normal, and then kisses the top of his head.

“He didn’t see, Buck,” Steve says. “He wouldn’t have let us come over here.”

Bucky nods; his arm is looped around Steve’s shoulders, and he tightens it a little. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

“Don’t be stupid,” Steve replies. Bucky chokes out a laugh and tilts his face up so he can nuzzle Steve’s neck. “We’ll be careful, okay? Like, nine months and we won’t have to deal with this anymore.”

Bucky nods again. Steve keeps holding him, swaying a little in the thin evening light, until Bucky swallows and looks up and kisses him, soft and short and tender.

“Hey,” Steve says, and smirks, “my parents aren’t gonna be home for another two hours.”

Bucky laughs. “Alright, Rogers, remind me where we were?”

So Steve does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr !! love u all so much hmu with prompts i literally love them i will do them eventually


	3. you're my best friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott and Bucky have a conversation post-hacking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is henry’s fault for sending me messages abt bucky and scott’s friendship i am so soft for them
> 
> talking abt sexual assault in this one
> 
> also i was uninspired for the titles of this chapter its from the queen song bc they are

Scott sees Bucky for the second time in six weeks when spends four and a half hours hacking, digging through the files of, and then convincing himself not to murder the seventh richest man in America. Wanda and Luis have to talk him out of it. He has it right there, the address of this guy’s penthouse and his weekly schedule, and he would like nothing more than to slit his fucking throat but Luis sits him down and asks him if he wants life in jail for killing a billionaire and he makes himself think rationally. Still, it burns, this hate, vivid and frightening.

“The fact that he’s doing this at all is good, Scott,” Wanda reminds him that night. He scrubs a hand down his face.

“What jury’s gonna indict that guy against Bucky?” Scott replies, but then he thinks of the videos again, Bucky’s thin, bruised frame being struck and intruded on and brutalized, his face agonized, and wonders who could see that and not indict.

“The same one that’ll put you away if you pull some stupid shit,” Wanda answers, and he calms down. Still, the next day when he departs for the obscene apartment Bucky is currently living in, tension thrums through him, and Wanda grabs his arm before he leaves and gives him a long look.

“Don’t threaten Steve today,” she tells him. Scott scoffs.

“Just ‘cause you already did doesn’t mean I can’t.”

“Obviously. I just mean today, right now, Bucky is already gonna be freaked” —She nods to the laptop— “and I don’t think it will help if you’re being aggressive with this guy that, you know, genuinely does seem to finally be a good thing in his life.”

Scott thinks this over, and finally agrees, “As long as he doesn’t do anything to deserve it.”

“Duh,” Wanda says, and hugs him before he goes.

He's seen Bucky once, alone in a cafe, but it still startles him how much healthier Bucky looks, his cheeks filled out and colored more, hair soft and shiny and bouncy, eyes a little brighter even though he is stiff and terrified today. Steve, to his credit, doesn’t do anything to warrant a threat. Scott doesn’t stay while they go through the computer but when he comes back after, Bucky looks pale and shaken and Steve won’t let go of his hand.

Bucky texts him two days later and asks if he wants to get coffee. Scott tells him of course he does, and he meets Bucky at Steve’s place again.

Instinctually, Scott tenses and moves in when Steve kisses Bucky goodbye, but Bucky pulls back and looks entirely relaxed and Scott reminds himself that things are different now. He locks eyes with Steve, who smiles, a little nervous, and god, he better be, when Scott gets a second with him he is going to threaten the hell out of this kid who’s six years his junior but who has at least four inches and probably forty pounds of muscle on him, but when he looks at Bucky Steve’s face goes undeniably, endearingly soft and Scott eases back.

They get hot chocolate and walk in Central Park and talk for a few minutes about little things, how are Luis and Wanda, how’s Maggie, Scott’s longtime on and off girlfriend, how’s the business, delicately circling the thing Bucky wants to say. Finally, he can’t bear it anymore.

“Did you see the photos?” Bucky whispers. His voice is very small.

Scott considers lying momentarily. “Yeah.” He swallows and turns to Bucky, breath held.

Bucky looks very pale. He won’t lift his gaze. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, “I understand if—if you don’t wanna be friends anymore—”

Scott stops walking. “Kid,” he says, perplexed, “how is that the conclusion you’re drawing here?”

Bucky shoves his hands (and that’s new, too, the way Bucky carries himself when he isn’t trying to shrink away from the amputation) in his pockets. “C-Cause I’m not good, I’m not—it’s so bad, it’s so disgusting, and I just—I just let him—” His voice breaks. He’s still looking down, but Scott knows he’s crying.

Scott stares at him. He thinks of Bucky at eighteen years old, trembling in his doorway, wanting to come in and escape the violent chill outside, and he thinks of Bucky reaching with a shaking hand across the couch to touch his thigh, whispering, “You can do whatever you want to me,” his eyes glassy and terrified because he was afraid something worse would happen if he didn’t make himself willing and enthusiastic, not believing him when he told him he didn’t want any of that, and he thinks of Bucky curled in on himself in the living room, blood streaking down his face, and he has to take a deep breath when he thinks about the men, the grotesquely rich, impossibly cruel, adult men who hurt him so badly he has come to expect pain and rejection from every crevice in his life, and his heart tears itself off of its hinges.

Scott swallows. “Buck,” he says gently, “Bucky. You were a kid, you are a kid, what he—I don’t—what that psycho did to you is fucking unforgivable, and there’s not one single part of it that’s your fault.”

Bucky stares down. “But I went back.”

“You were just a kid, Bucky,” Scott repeats.

Bucky shakes his head. “I was twenty—”

“Yeah, and this billionaire in his sixties shouldn’t have fucking touched you,” Scott snarls. It’s rare he lets Bucky see when he’s angry, but he can’t stop it right now. Bucky flinches, and he immediately regrets it. “Sorry,” he says quietly, and takes a few breaths. “Kiddo, it wasn’t your fault. What he did to you was sick. I’m just—Bucky, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. That this happened to you, and that I didn’t do anything—”

Bucky looks up, eyes bright. “Don’t be stupid,” he whispers. “I didn’t let you guys know. You couldn’t have done anything.”

Scott swallows hard. “Still.” Bucky shifts his weight on frozen ground and shakes his head. “Buck, there’s no one on earth with an atom of decency who could—could see what he did to you, and think anything but that you’re unbelievably brave, okay?”

Bucky doesn’t say anything. Anytime Scott has complimented him on anything before, he’s shot it down or scoffed or made him stop talking, and the fact that he doesn’t right now startles him.

Then Bucky hugs him, so abruptly he spills part of his hot chocolate, and he hugs him back and becomes aware that his body isn’t quite as angular and thin as it had been. He buries his face in Scott’s shoulder for a good forty seconds and Scott doesn’t stop him and when he pulls back, Scott squeezes his shoulder and says, “I love you, buddy, okay?” and Bucky nods, and they keep walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for not updating eitd i have had no time or energy, i promiseeee i will this week, i hope this is somewhat satisfying at least
> 
> cafelesbian on tumblr, hmu w requests i love them if u sent me one and i havent done it know that i will eventually im just busy these days


	4. you and me forevermore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> got a tumblr prompt for steve and bucky celebrating steves birthday when they first got back together so i figured i would post it here too lol

“Hey,” Bucky says suddenly, looking up mid-spaghetti bite, “what are we doing for your birthday?”

It’s a week before the day in question. Right now, they’re sitting down at the counter eating buttery, cheesy pasta that they’ve just cooked, before they’re going to surf On Demand for a corny movie that will make them forget that in ten days, the trial will begin.

Steve swallows his bite and rolls his eyes. “We don’t need to do anything for my birthday, Buck.” 

Bucky frowns. “Of course we do.”

“Baby, we’ve got enough to think about,” Steve says, which is true. The strain that Bucky is putting on himself to get up every morning after restless, nightmare-plagued sleep and go to cross examination prep and read whatever appalling headlines about hil the tabloids are putting out for sweeteners from Alexander Pierce is unimaginable. “We can order in and watch a movie, for all I care. That’s actually, like, my ideal night.”

Bucky cocks his head. “Stevie,” he says, “c’mon. We haven’t celebrated your birthday in four years.”

Steve sighs and reaches over for Bucky’s hand, because sometimes the physical reminder that he’s there is a privilege Steve won’t pass up. “You up to dinner with Sam and Nat?”

Bucky perks up a little, satisfied. “Yeah! Of course.”

Steve leans in and pecks him on the lips. “Alright. We can go out for sushi, or something.” Bucky smiles and squeezes his hands. “Hey, don’t worry about presents or anything, alright?”

Bucky’s face falls, creases between his eyes deepening. “Um,” he beings, and swallows. “I wanna—obviously, I want to give you presents. Just… Just… I feel weird, uh, buying you stuff with your money.” He looks up, cheeks red, mouth pulled into a worried little line.

Steve sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Baby. Everything is yours too, you know. This house, this money, this.” He gestures to himself, and Bucky huffs out a laugh. “Buck, I promise. I—If you don’t buy me gifts ‘cause it’s a stressful time and I really don’t need them, by all means. But—But don’t worry about money, okay? Like I said, and will continue to say, everything is yours, love.” Bucky nods, put at ease, but not entirely convinced. Steve squeezes his hand. “I promise, Buck. Seriously.” Bucky nods again, a little stronger. Steve kisses his thumb and adds, “You’re the only thing I want.”

Bucky giggles. The only acceptable gift, Steve decides, is that sounds, bottled up and soaking every inch of his life. He kisses Bucky’s nose, just so he’ll laugh again.

***

One week later, Steve wakes up alone, which is rare and slightly worrisome. He gets up and stretches and heads out to look for Bucky, and stops when he gets to the kitchen and sees Bucky, hair pulled up, leaning over the stove.

Bucky turns to him, and Steve’s heart flips itself over with emotion; Bucky’s holding a plate, eggs fried to quivering perfection and golden toast with soft butter cooling on top and pancakes stacked perfectly up like Bucky has prepared them for a magazine photo. Steve looks at it, then looks at Bucky, eyes bright, face hopeful, and he can’t find the words to express Bucky’s impossible reality so he moves in and kisses his lips, light and chaste. When he pulls back, Bucky’s blushing.

“I was gonna bring it to you,” Bucky says, biting his lip. 

“Want me to get back in bed?” Steve teases. Bucky laughs and shakes his head. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I know.” Bucky lifts the plate up. “Happy birthday, baby.”

Steve kisses him once more and they sit. The breakfast is delicious, of course, and in the living room, Bucky has stacked up a pile of boxes perfectly wrapped in silver. Steve watches Bucky, his cheeks colored, lips pursed against smiling too hard, and wishes moments of this much happiness could be preserved, the vividness of this joy filed away to be relived later.

Bucky got him gifts anyway, because of course he did, and he watches Steve unwrap them with endearing pride—bright yellow flowers, some tee shirts, new running shoes that Steve had mentioned needing, an engraved easel. Steve finishes unwrapping them and turns to Bucky to thank him and kiss him and generally cherish his existence, and Bucky is pursing his lips.

“I—I also, um, wrote you something. Just… one sec.” He stands and leaves the room briefly and when he returns, hands shaking, he holds out a piece of paper. “Just a little… just a poem, um, it might be—”

Steve squeezes his hands, and he stops talking. Then Steve takes it from him.

When he reads what Bucky’s written, words so lovely in an order so deeply special and so Bucky, Steve’s breath catches. He reads it twice more, then looks up. Bucky’s cheeks are crimson.

Steve stands and kisses him, then his forehead, then both his cheeks, until he’s smiling. “You,” Steve says, “are the loveliest, most brilliant, most astonishing person I’ve ever met in my life.”

The red in Bucky’s cheeks deepens, but he looks mildly delighted. He tilts his chin up and kisses Steve, syrupy and slow. Time could end now, Steve thinks, and he would be crystalized in perfect contentment.

They have a picnic in Central Park for lunch, warm breeze keeping unbearable New York heat at bay as they sip lemonade and lean against each other even though it puts them at closer risk for overheating. Around them, families have begun to gather to see fireworks tonight, and they watch people lazily, flicking their heads in the directions of interesting looking ones and making up backstories to make each other laugh. 

“You’re getting old,” Bucky tells him, shifting so he can kiss Steve’s jaw. Steve snorts.

“I’m a year and a half older than you, jerk.”

Bucky pretends to think this over. “Hm. You seem older.”

Steve fake scowls, too flooded in adoration to come up with a proper dig in response. Giggling, Bucky settles back against his chest.

They stay there for a few hours until dinner; instead of going out, they order sushi and Bucky insists on stringing up paper streamers, making Steve stand on tiptoes to reach the highest crevices of the ceiling and kissing him in thanks. Sam and Natasha and Peggy and Wanda come, thrilled to see them even in the midst of this crisis, giftbags strung over their wrists and enveloping them in hugs. They eat around the coffee table, causally sprawled out over the living room floor, until Steve’s chest is tight from laughing. Bucky, leaned against his chest, gives him a small squeeze on the wrist, gentle and meaningless, a reminder that he’s there.

When he blows the candles out on the cake Bucky made and is rather proud of, he wishes for Bucky to win the case next week. Bucky is watching him closely, face rosy in the tangerine candle light and then fuzzy in the dark again, and Steve grins at him and leans in to kiss him, clumsily, the faint smell of birthday candle smoke sweeping over them.

He opens gifts from his friends and thanks them profusely; even Wanda brings him a sweater. It starts to rain later that evening, warm summer mist that forces them inside from the balcony, laughing. He gets them cabs home and hugs them, and when it’s just him and Bucky again, washing frosting off of dishes and laughing at nothing and occasionally kissing, a giddiness that hasn’t come over them in weeks. Steve wraps both arms around Bucky’s waist and Bucky pushes onto his toes and buries his face in Steve’s neck and they hold each other so tight that when Bucky starts to lose balance, they both sway. Bucky is here. Sometimes it still sweeps over Steve and makes him feel weightless with fortune, his body quivering with it, like the moment a plane lifts off the ground and leaves you momentarily breathless and motionless.

They take showers and get into bed. Steve can see Bucky growing anxious, hands moving worriedly to smooth his shirt down, eyebrows knitted a fraction closer, and he knows Bucky’s waiting to see if Steve expects anything. Swallowing the nausea that elicits, Steve gives him a soft, soft smile and holds his arms open, and Bucky lays against him. 

“Hey,” Steve says, “today was perfect. Thank you, baby.” He kisses Bucky’s forehead. Against the window, warm rain taps insistently above them.

Bucky sighs, some of the tension in his body uncoiling itself. “I’m glad,” he says. Steve moves his hand in figure eights over Bucky’s back, feeling him ease further against him, the familiar slopes and curves of his body comforting against Steve’s. “Happy birthday, Stevie,” Bucky murmurs, “I love you so much.”

“Love you too, baby,” Steve says, smiling against his hair. When sleep sweeps over him, Bucky already passed out on his chest, their fingers woven together, he’s perfectly settled, the world gentle and sugar spun, the threats small and flimsy and unimportant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i will absolutely update eitd this week im so sorry for not last weekend i think we are all dying a lil... hope youre all staying in and staying safe
> 
> cafelesbian on tumblr feel free to hmu there w prompts or qs or thoughts love you all


	5. you're everything I need and more

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anon: for the drabbles steve, bucky, sam and natasha’s senior prom?!?
> 
> ugh this was fun to write sorry it took 3 days i got over invested in it
> 
> title is obviously from halo which is referenced here bc i was eight in 2009 but i feel like it was probably played at a lot of senior proms

Four weeks to prom and six weeks to graduation, Sam asks Steve, Bucky and Nat to go in a group with him. “It’d be fun,” he says, “and, uh, you guys can say you’re just going with us in a group, get your parents off your ass about getting dates.”

“I kinda assumed we were already doing that,” Steve says.

The four of them are drinking milkshakes in a booth of a diner close to Natasha’s in Clinton Hill, just back from seeing a movie together. Steve has an arm slung over Bucky’s shoulder. It’s raining out, a heavy May downpour that leaks humidity indoors, and they’re waiting there until it eases to take the subway home.

“Is that you asking me to prom?” Nat asks Sam.

He snorts. “You want me to organize a flash mob?”

“Nah. If I’d go with any straight guy, it’d be you.” She winks at him; he grins back.

“You haven’t asked me to prom,” Bucky teases Steve, nudging him with his shoulder.

“You wanna go to prom with me?” Steve asks.

Bucky shrugs, stealing Steve’s baseball cap and situating it on his own head. “I guess.”

Steve snorts and leans in to kiss him. Bucky giggles into it; Natasha throws a fry at them.

“We’re right here,” Sam offers. Steve flips him off and gets another fry lodged at him.

***

“Should we coordinate suits?” Bucky asks, five days later.

Bucky’s head is in Steve’s lap. Steve’s playing with his hair with one hand while he sketches his face with the other, the lines a little too hard and stiff because he doesn’t want to disturb Bucky trying to get the right angle. 

“Get the same rose, or something that we can put in after we leave,” Steve suggests, leaning down to kiss his face. Bucky laughs.

“We could get flowers that match each other’s tie,” Bucky adds. Steve grins.

“Go somewhere this weekend and find some?” Bucky nods, shifting a bit, throwing off Steve’s reference, not that he minds.

“I…” Bucky begins, and then pauses, biting his lower lip in the way Steve knows means he’s self conscious. “I know, um, my parents would think it was weird, and people at school would say shit, but, um. I was looking at, uh, not boring suits, like, these cute pink ones, or lilac, or the floral ones, and I wish I could buy one of those.” His cheeks are faintly pink. Steve smiles, fond. Bucky once, a little drunk, had let Natasha put cheap lip gloss on him and tossed him a pink crop top that he had promptly put on before sauntering over to Steve and making out with him. Steve knows Bucky likes soft, pretty feminine things, and Steve also knows he’s shy about it, that the sneers from his dad and the whispers from people at school if he ever showed up with his nails painted or a pink sweater isn’t worth it. Even saying it to Steve makes him blush.

“You should get the suit you want, babe,” Steve tells him. “We’re about to graduate and move and never see any of these fucking people again.”

Bucky smiles a little. “Yeah. Still.” 

Steve sets his sketchbook down and pushes a tuft of Bucky’s hair back. “Well,” he says, “what if you get a cute pink tie and I get a pink rose to go with it, and I’ll get a lavender one and you get a lavender flower, and we’re the two hottest people there, obviously, and then, when we get married, we get the two best, cutest, prettiest suits in the world.”

Bucky laughs and reaches up to touch Steve’s cheek, clumsily. 

***

They end up renting suits because they’ve been conservative with money in preparation for finding an apartment and anyway, neither of them really need a suit for anything after this. Steve’s is navy, almost black, lilac tie emphasize his eyes, glittering blue like the ocean under pale morning light, and the fact that Bucky can’t kiss him right here is utterly infuriating. Steve and his parents show up at Bucky’s for photos and tears from their mothers and final tie adjustments before Steve’s dad gives them a ride to Natasha’s.

The photos are endless; Steve throws an arm over Bucky’s shoulder—casual, no tenderness, nothing too intimate—and Bucky squeezes his hip once, small and private. Steve’s lip twists up a fraction, and Bucky squeezes him again, and they are kissed once more by their moms before climbing into the car and leaving a seat between them in the back.

The drive feels endless because Steve is right beside him, looking like _that_ and Bucky can’t touch him. They bought each other flowers without showing each other, and Bucky’s is in his pocket, a delicate pink rose the color of his own tie that he’ll tuck into Steve’s pocket when they’re alone together. Finally, they get dropped off. Steve’s dad tells them to have fun, not drink too much, get home before three, and they wave him off. Then, when the car has turned safely off of the block, Bucky throws his arm around Steve’s neck and kisses him with such excitement that Steve stumbles a few steps back hugging his waist. Bucky pulls far enough back for them both to laugh and then kisses him once more.

“Hi,” Bucky says, after a minute or so of making out in front of Natasha’s house. Steve kisses his nose.

“Hi.”

“You clean up pretty nice.”

“You don’t look so bad yourself.”

Bucky kisses him again, making up for the hour and a half he couldn’t. Then, still laughing, he pulls out the flowers he’d tucked delicately into his pocket and nests it in Steve’s, leaning back to admire it.

“I love you,” Steve tells him, and pulls out a little cluster of lavenders and baby breath. He nestles it behind Bucky’s ear and mimes taking a photo.

“Punk,” Bucky teases, removing it and searching for the opening in his breast pocket.

“Here,” Steve says, and does it for him. Then he stands back and stares at him, absolutely beaming.

Bucky grins and pecks another kiss to Steve’s lips. “Shall we, then?”

Steve reaches down to squeeze his hand and pull him up the stairs to ring the doorbell. The sun has begun to set, bright creamy light that they both squint at. Steve thinks that it makes the blue in Bucky's eyes softer and shinier than usual, like some precious piece of sea glass. Steve kisses his cheek before the door pulls open.

Nat looks pretty, red hair pulled up into a complicated looking twist, flowy powder blue dress not making her look any less intimidating. She grins and gives them each a hug and ushers them into the kitchen where Sam and Natasha’s parents both are, chatting over bread and cheese and giving Bucky and Steve warm hellos when they come in. Sam gives them each a quick hug and clap on the shoulders and a bright, excited smile. Natasha’s mother tells them they look so handsome and so great together (she’s always doing that, overcompensating for the fact that Bucky and Steve’s parents can’t know they’re together. They find it quite endearing) and the four of them are ushered into Nat’s backyard for group photos in lush grass.

“The couples, now,” Nat’s dad says, to which Natasha snaps, “Dad!”

“Dates, I meant!” he defends himself. She faux smiles while the rest of them laugh.

Sam’s parents pay for a car over, which feels like an insane luxury, even though it’s not. Prom is being thrown in the Grand Prospect Hall, an event space at the edge of Park Slope and Greenwood Heights, a comically, exaggeratedly old fashioned party space, pink lights making everyone look flushed, fake gold trimming along the walls and floors, stuffy tables with little name cards organized discreetly around the dance floor. 2009 hits reverberate too loudly, Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and people sway or grind or nod to it.

“C’mon,” Sam says, “let’s find our fucking table.” They’re sitting with a few of Natasha’s friends, girls she bitches about constantly, but, when she sees them, hugs them and tells them they look great. Bucky gives Steve a smirk. On the way over, she had loudly announced, “God, I can’t wait to graduate and only talk to you three.” Steve and Bucky wave hello and get clapped on the back by some friends from class and clubs and told they look cute together by some girls desperate to prove their progressiveness, and when Sam and Nat are whirled out of that sight, Steve turns to Bucky, a little sheepish.

“Wanna dance?” he says, and Bucky laughs.

Everyone knows they’re a couple. There was a brief and overwhelming period after they started dating where it was all anyone talked about, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes being gay, not maliciously, neccesarily, just with exhausting curiosity and disbelief. It has mostly calmed down; they both have casual friends outside of their close group and no one is shoving them into lockers or hissing slurs at them or even, for the most part, treating them differently, beyond Steve gettin wary looks in the locker room that he and Sam both meet with glowering and the one time Steve got into a fight over a terrible thing said to him and Bucky by another guy on the soccer team. Still, there is an expectation, unspoken and undefined, the feeling that they are violating something when they hold hands on their way to class or kiss next to the lockers or lean against one another during an assembly, some prickle of discomfort that they’re doing something wrong. 

“C’mon,” Bucky finally says, and takes his hand. “If they can half-fuck in public, we can dance.” He jerks his head towards another guy on Steve’s soccer team and his girlfriend, making out against a pillar in the floor. Steve snorts and lets Bucky pull him out, weaving between their peers, his smaller hand enveloping Steve’s, head laid in the crook of Steve’s shoulder. Steve squeezes his hand and secures his arm around Bucky’s waist. _Halo_ breaks through the air, and Bucky lifts his gaze and mouths the lyrics, grinning. Steve kisses his forehead.

The night is fun, not spectacular, just fun, the only appropriate description for senior prom in the world, probably. The room is warm and heavy and people lose their jackets to jump around to Kesha and drink too much soda in lieu of alcohol.

“Want some air?” Steve asks Bucky, two hours or so in, when they have exhausted dancing and chatting and eating lukewarm hors d'oeuvres. Bucky nods, slipping his arm around Steve’s waist as they hurry out, giggling privately at nothing.

It’s begun to rain now, water cooling off the air.. They stay under the cheap white awning, raindrops imprinting themselves in the fabric above them, a heavy, insistent rhythm that drowns out the music. Steve’s hair is falling loose a bit. Bucky pushes it back for him.

“Let’s get married here,” Steve says.

Bucky snorts. “You’re joking.”

“You don’t want fake limestone metal at our wedding? You aren’t into neon pink lights?”

Bucky laughs and shoves him, not hard, so he can pull him back with his tie and kiss him. Steve cups his face with one hand, his waist with the other, which always makes Bucky become honey in his hands, kissing him back too slowly and softly for this to be a stolen kiss at a high school dance, the tenderness behind it too huge for that.

Behind them, the glass door swings open, and they pull sheepishly apart. A chemistry teacher eyes them, purses her lips, exasperated, and walks away, her chaperoning over for the night. They wait until she’s gone and collapse into laughter. Then Bucky hugs Steve around the middle, leaning all his weight into Steve’s chest, and Steve wraps both arms around him and they stand there and watch the smear of white light headlights soar by on the highway visible just beyond them, quiet in the rain.

Bucky already feels a little dizzy and drunk when they leave prom and head to the party after, an anonymous, discreet apartment that is rented out for teenagers to get wasted in. By then, everyone is sufficiently wasted, Steve and Bucky included, enough so that when Bucky steadies the two of them against the wall and kisses Steve, hungry and tasting like cranberry vodka, the self consciousness has melted away.

Two weeks to graduation, four weeks to the end of the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m fucking dying of boredom in my home just like all of us so HMU with requests or jokes or whatever


	6. I would fucking end them

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> triplethreat333: a conversation between Scott and Steve where Scott threatens him if he hurts Bucky?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for giving me another excuse to write scott being a protective big brother to bucky
> 
> i feel like i owe henry a shoutout on this because this was definitely inspired by conversations we had about this i love u

Scott can find out quite a lot about Steve in an evening. His address, for one, which makes Wanda say, “Holy shit,” when they pull up the real estate page. His credit score, which is immaculate. His non-existent criminal record, which doesn’t soothe Scott much, although he had half-expected that he might be a registered sex offender or something. Information about his galleries and awards and events. Interviews with him where he comes off charming but stiff and a bit awkward, like someone who had grown into adulthood in too short a span of time and seems almost unsettlingly mature for their age.

“He references Bucky a lot,” Wanda says, as they read another one. He does, with vague, sweeping statements about losing someone and missing someone and heartache.

“That a point against him, though?” Scott says. “Creepily obsessed, maybe?”

Wanda rolls her eyes. “They got yanked apart, Scott.”

“I know, I know!” Bucky’s past has always been something of a blank spot for them. He knew Bucky told Wanda a bit more, but not much. He’d mentioned conversion therapy once and then never brought it up again, and Scott hadn’t pressed him. It has been colored in more in the past few weeks, has taken shape in Scott’s mind and left him with a lead-heavy weight in his chest about how much suffering this kid has endured. “I know. I just—I’m stressed. It seems too good to be true.”

“Yeah.” Wanda turns her beer absently. “I don’t know. He seemed good when I saw him. Like, really, really good.”

“That’s good,” Scott says. “You think he’d get lunch with me?”

“Yeah. He said he missed you.” That makes him smile. He has missed Bucky an almost unbearable amount.

It’s just—Bucky is not his kid, only because Bucky’s twenty-one and he’s thirty, but he truly and completely believes whatever this vicious, exhausting protection he feels for Bucky is what he’s supposed to feel for his child (A little over a year later, he will hold Cassie and realize it is). When they hadn’t heard from him for two, three, four days, a panic had settled in unlike Scott had ever felt, an immovable barbed wire constraint in his chest that dug into him every time he thought about it. He thought he’d been killed, or kidnapped by some psychotic client or, somehow the worst of all, committed suicide because he hadn’t understood that his impact on their lives is so immeasurably good and losing that would be like if someone suddenly plucked the moon from the sky and left a tattered, leering hole.  
But he is okay, or at least, he is alive, seemingly thriving in a penthouse with a boyfriend who looks like he was made in a lab. They get lunch a few days later, and Wanda is right, Bucky does look better; even the way he walks is lighter, a little bouncier. He looks taller, Scott notices, and startles, until he realizes Bucky isn’t slumping quite as much. A mass in his chest, knotted and taut, uncoils slightly.

They don’t go far, just a sandwich shop on sixty seventh where they get a window seat. Bucky sips a cappuccino and jumps every time the door shuts, and Scott watches him for any sign that thing are bad, any bruises on his wrists or flinching when he checks his phone, and when none reveal themselves, he asks.

“So,” Scott says to Bucky, reaching across the table to squeeze his shoulder, “tell me about your new guy.”

Bucky blushes, honestly blushes, which is quite endearing. “What do you wanna know?”

“Everything,” Scott says, though the true answer is, _that he’s treating you okay._

Bucky smiles and spins his drink. “Um. He was my boyfriend in high school. I’ve known him since I was five. He’s an artist, he—he’s really successful. He lives—we live in a penthouse on Central Park. I—He’s the best, ever. I love him so much, Scott.”

“He’s good to you?” Scott presses. “He doesn’t ever—ever do anything you don’t want him to do?”

Bucky shakes his head, but his face falls a bit. “Hey,” Scott says, and squeezes his hand. “You can tell me if he’s—”

“No,” Bucky interrupts. “It’s nothing like that. I just, um. I don’t know why he’d want somebody like me.”

“Oh, Buck,” Scott says gently. “Bucky, you’re so fucking great. You’re my favorite guy on Earth. He’s fucking lucky to get to be anywhere in your sphere.”

Bucky blushes and looks away, his usual response to compliments.

But later, Scott wonders the very same thing. Not that Bucky isn’t wonderful and adorable and fantastic, not that he’s unloveable in any way, but Steve, with his millions and his movie star smile and his apparent disregard for all of Bucky’s emotional baggage that would send most people scattering, seems too good to be true.

Frustratingly, Scott doesn’t get a moment alone with Steve to assess this until the third or fourth time he meets him. He keeps meeting Bucky at his place in hopes he’ll have to slip into the bathroom before he goes and finally, blessedly, he arrives to Steve buzzing him and telling him that Bucky will be ready in a few, he’s just showering.

Steve is nervous, and boy, should he be. Bucky probably warned him it was coming. “You want some coffee?” Steve offers, as Scott opens his mouth and begins, “Look.”

Steve shuts up.

Scott continues, “I’m not threatening you or anything. But, um. Anyone who might hypothetically be living with or dating Bucky has to be good to him. And if they weren’t, I would fucking end them. And I would let them know I did time for murder” —Steve blinks, taken aback. Scott hopes Bucky didn’t tell him the time was actually for hacking his insurance agency. Too late now.— “And I would do it again if they hurt him, alright, ‘cause Bucky’s like a little brother to me and, in this hypothetical situation, trusts them and them taking advantage of that would be the worst thing anyone in the world could do. So don’t hurt him, ever. Is what I’d tell them.” It occurs to him that Steve, while younger than him, is taller and looks like he could bench ten of Scott. He clears his throat. “Anyway. I’m not a dick, but I just wanted to make that crystal clear. We good?”

Steve blinks, bewildered. “Um,” he says. “I—yeah, man, I’m not—I love Bucky. I love him.” The earnestness in his voice is admittedly sweet. “I would—I’d never, ever hurt him.” Scott gives him a begrudging smile. “And, um. What I’d say to anyone who would is, I’ll fucking kill you. So, um. I think we have the same values here.”

“Good,” Scott says easily, and shakes out the tension in his shoulders. “That’s all.”

Steve gives him a tentative smile, easing back a bit. Bucky bounces in, his body loose, hair damp, and beelines it to Scott to hug him because he wants to be the death of Scott, apparently, grinning brightly. “You ready?” he asks, and Scott nods.

Bucky crosses the room to kiss Steve goodbye. “I love you,” he says and Steve pushes back a loose tuft of hair for him and responds, “I love you, too. Have fun.”

“What’d you say to him?” Bucky asks, as soon as the door shuts.

“Hm?” Scott says. “What’s that?” Bucky shoves him.

“You weren’t too mean, were you?”

“I was exactly mean enough.” Scott smirks.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I love him, Scott,” he says, voice soft and hopeful. “I really, really, really love him. He’s about as good of a person as there is.”

Scott musses his hair a bit to make him laugh. “I know, kiddo. He’s lucky to have you. I’m just making sure he knows that.” The elevator opens for them. “I like him, Buck,” he adds, because Bucky is still watching him with anxious eyes.

“Yeah?” Bucky says, so visibly relieved that Scott almost feels bad about threatening Steve.

“Yeah. If he makes you happy, I like him.”

“He does,” Bucky says, without a second of hesitation.

“Good,” Scott says simply, and throws a lazy arm across Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky next to him, his eyes bright and his hair shiny and bouncy, body held straight, so indisputably happy, gives Scott a small, hopeful inclination to trust Steve Rogers. He will prove himself so many times that months later, Scott will apologize profoundly, but right now, he lets the cold, whirling anxiety in his chest fall away a bit and squeezes Bucky’s shoulder and walks towards their lunch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr :) send me more of these i literally love them


	7. you keep the world at bay for me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous: for the drabbles i known you’ve mentioned them getting plants but could you maybe write one where they go to a furniture store and pick stuff out and maybe bucky getting nervous about the prices idk i feel like he might

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you would be correct he might and i hope this is what u wanted it may be slightly off track 
> 
> title is from the dixie chicks song easy silence bc frankly that's what i listened to when i wrote it
> 
> some tws for talking and thinking about abuse

Steve, despite the fact that he makes more money off of one painting than his or Bucky’s families ever had at once growing up, does not project himself as a millionaire. It’s only noticeable if you’re paying attention; he wears sweaters that are slightly nicer than what his friends are buying from Urban Outfitters and Forever 21, he tips four dollars on a six dollar coffee, he doesn’t flinch the way Bucky does, and most people conscious of money do, when a lunch bill comes out to sixty eight dollars. Maybe, Bucky thinks sometimes, he does seem rich, and Bucky is just too close to him to know. Maybe Steve, wearing Ray Bans and purchasing a nineteen dollar salad and handing over his flashy black credit card, absolutely seems rich.

Bucky can’t begrudge him. No one deserves money more than Steve, nobody worked harder and achieved it without exploiting labor or being handed a trust fund or winning the lottery. No one is more generous with it. Bucky has never seen him buy a meal or a coffee without tipping. He buys his friends lunches and tee shirts and cars home without hesitation, does it so smoothly that he never makes anyone feel bad about it. He writes checks to different charities and hands tens to people begging in the subway. Bucky doesn’t begrudge him of it, ever. He’s earned every bit of it.

It’s just that it makes him feel wildly inadequate. Every meal Steve buys him is a humiliation, every second in his beautiful apartment, every sweater he leaves at Bucky’s door without a word. Bucky is worse than dead weight, he is an intruder, he is a tapeworm on Steve’s whole life, sucking him dry of what he has, freeloading off of him and contributing nothing. It’s unbearable, at first. Bucky drives himself insane poring over receipts and trying to calculate how he could ever possibly repay Steve, knowing he can’t, that even one grocery trip is too much for him. Little by little, the anxiety chips away, slow and tumultuous as the erosion of a cliff. He stops wincing at the price of coffee, he becomes timidly able to order an extra side or a drink with his meals, he purchases clothing for himself with Steve’s card, albeit after checking ten times if it’s alright.

But if this process is slow and painful, it shrieks to a crescendo when they decide to move. Steve is the one really driving the process because it paralyzes Bucky to weigh the costs of each home and type of home and location and buying versus renting. He comes out of their room one morning and Steve is awake, post-run, looking importantly at his computer with about eight tabs open and a google doc of a pros and cons list of each house.

“If this art thing doesn’t work out,” Bucky tells Steve, hugging him from behind, tucking his chin onto his shoulder, “you’ve got a future in organizing people’s lives.” Steve snorts, turning his head to kiss Bucky’s forehead.

The numbers on the houses they look at are so huge that honestly, it doesn’t even phase Bucky. They seem too expensive to be real, let alone to be something that he is going to own, and there’s too much bureaucracy with payment up front and over time so somehow, the four million Steve ends up spending on their Park Slope brownstone somehow doesn’t make him feel as stomach-constrictingly guilty, if only because it seems impossible. He had, when they were buying the house, asked Steve if he was sure he wanted Bucky’s name on it too.

“In case you change your mind,” he said timidly, “or you—” But at that point, Steve kissed his forehead clumsily and replied, “I’m not gonna change my mind, and it’s your house, too,” so firmly that Bucky had believed him.

It is the tangible things that make him anxious, Steve handing over his credit card for an eighty dollar cashmere sweater Bucky had been looking at, Steve leaving overpriced bottles of Kiehl’s and Origin and Virtue shampoo lined up for him in the shower. Once, Steve hands his card over for a meal that costs seventy dollars, and Bucky thinks, _that’s what sex and a blowjob cost._

He knows what it looks like, too. During the trial, tabloids identified his and Steve’s relationship in various and increasingly creative terms but it always boiled down to the same thing. Escort, long-term arrangement, live in call boy, sugar baby.

“They’re insane, Buck,” Steve had said, “they’re fucking insane. Don’t read those, babe, you know it’s all total bullshit.”

But it had been hard to stop, and now, every time they are out together, Bucky scrutinizes the ways everyone is looking at them, if he does really look like a hooker tagging along his rich client, if it’s really inconceivable that he could be loved without some kind of sex arrangement facilitating it. Sometimes, he steps outside and tries to see them: Bucky, smaller and thinner and younger, if only by a year and a half, leaning into Steve, tall and absurdly jacked in his expensive jackets and jeans, hand in the small of Bucky’s back, and he winces at what people are thinking. He knows it’s not true, knows Steve isn’t keeping him around for sex because there is no sex, but still. Sometimes, when they go out for breakfast, he asks Steve if he can pay, even though the card he carries is attached to exactly the same bank, so any non existent observers will think they are equals.

Money is just. So fucking hard. He now has the ability to buy anything he wants, any meal or item of clothing or first class plane ticket to Europe. He never has to work again and will still die and probably be able to leave his and Steve’s potential children enough money to do the same. He finds himself purchasing a coffee and then, paranoid, opening his bank account to be sure he didn’t accidentally spend six dollars that he doesn’t have, and sees seven figures staring back at him underneath a message thanking him for being a premium client.

He thinks about the disgusting things he used to do for an extra ten dollars, the ways he allowed himself to be debased for enough money to buy the first meal he’d eat in three days. Sometimes he thinks about his parents in their small, small rent controlled Bay Ridge apartment. Sometimes he thinks about Wanda and Scott, who have told him a dozen times that he deserves everything his has but who still take up extra hours working to have enough to pay rent and electricity bills and eat.

He knows it’s strange for Steve, too, if less so. Growing up, Steve’s family was maybe one rung above Bucky’s financially; they could afford an extra vacation a year and always fed Bucky when his kitchen had been emptied out and not yet replaced. He wasn’t rich, though, wasn’t anywhere close, and still seems startled by it. He’d told Bucky that he had hit a million dollars at his third exhibit and when he’d seen the number in his bank account, he’d called Chase to be sure it wasn’t a mistake. 

“I don’t… I feel really gross, having this much money,” he told Bucky once. “I could never spend this much on myself in a thousand years. It makes me so much happier if you accept that it’s yours, too, and let me spend it on things that you like. Please.”

But still, that offer feels flimsy and insane when he thinks about just how much Steve is spending on him.

Moving happens so fast in such a whirlwind of activity, adopting and going through the training process with Penny at the very same time, that when they have unpacked nearly all the boxes and organized the furniture to the best of their abilities, it occurs to both of them that they hadn’t exactly planned for new house decor.

“It looks a little bare,” Steve says, when they have adjusted their living room to as nice as it can look.

Bucky wouldn’t have said so, but it does. Furniture that had filled out the penthouse has been compressed to a building with rigid rooms and a classic layout, and between the furniture they’d given away and left in the building for the next tenants, there’s less furniture than they had thought. The room could use a few more chairs and pillows and blanket throws, a different rug maybe. Upstairs, the bedroom could use a couple more chairs too. He tucks himself into Steve’s side and nods.

A lot of it, they do handle online. A patio set for the garden, a cushion for the end of their bed for Penny, a couple of new bookshelves, picked out and ordered online one night. “Don’t even think about price,” Steve tells Bucky, which he doesn’t seem to realize is impossible. Even for Bucky, though, being cuddled up in their new living room, sharing a pint of ice cream and scrolling through online catalogue after online catalogue, it’s as painless as possible.

A week later, they are in DUMBO for no reason other than that they had wanted to be. They eat lunch on the water and duck in and out of pop up stores and organic grocery markets, and they’re walking aimlessly when they come across a furniture store.

“We need a couple more chairs,” Steve points out, and Bucky nods, so they head in.

Bucky feels dizzy in less than five minutes. He feels exposed, like what he is is accentuated by the warm, intentionally exposed lightbulbs and three hundred dollar pillows and the obvious wealth of the other people in there, very suddenly too hot, his chest tight. He is trying to work out why, and a way to express this to Steve, who is looking at a couple of armchairs, when one of the women working there approaches them and asks if they want help.

“Yeah,” Steve says, smiling. “Um, these two.” He gestures to them, two very soft, admittedly gorgeous armchairs. “And also that backless couch over there” —He points; Bucky vaguely registers looking at it earlier. “How much for two of those, plus these?”

She tells them, and Bucky bites his lip. 

“Have you two come in here before?” The woman asks. “You both look so familiar…”

“Yeah,” Steve says quickly, squeezing Bucky’s hand, “couple of times, just looking.” Bucky returns the squeeze, grateful. “We’re gonna think for a minute.” Apparently satisfied, she moves on.

Steve says something to him, probably, “Do you like these?” but Bucky doesn’t hear it.

Alexander used to tell him not to touch anything in his house. He wasn’t allowed on the sofa or chairs, he was allowed in the bed only for sex. He had to kneel on the carpet and wait until Alexander hit him or told him to stand or undid his fly. The two or three times Alexander made him stay over, he kept him on the ground next to his bed, freezing and slick with sweat, dried blood and come between his legs, too terrified to sleep, listening to Alexander breathe above him and flinching every time he shifted. Sometimes, he’d get back to Wanda and Scott, delirious with terror and pain, too frightened to sit on the couch, a ratty, threadbare hand me down Scott got years ago, too afraid of whatever punishment they’d inflict on him for dirtying it, needing to be coaxed into settling onto it with a blanket.

_Can’t have you dirtying this up, sweetheart, you couldn’t afford this if you let everyone in New York fuck you—_

He feels throttled by that filthiness, suddenly, all of it swelled to a breaking point inside of him. Somehow, it hadn’t been quite so bad at Steve’s, sitting on Steve’s couch and sleeping in his bed and using his bathtub, maybe because Steve softened the edges of every horrible anxiety, yes, but also because being confronted by price tags makes him feel unmanageably dirty. 

Penny nuzzles him. The saleswoman is off helping someone else and Steve turns to Bucky, hand very gentle on his back.

“Hey,” Steve says, “you alright, baby?”

“Can we—” Bucky whispers, “—Can we just, um, step outside for a second?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, “‘course.” Bucky nods vaguely, and then they are outside, the sun sharp and bright as a razor. He winces.

“You okay?” Steve is watching him, careful and worried.

“I just—” Bucky swallows hard. “This stuff is so expensive, Steve—”

“Buck,” Steve says, looking crestfallen, his usual look when Bucky brings up money.

“—and I just… I don’t think I’m worth this, Steve… this is all just so fucking _nice_ , and I’m not—it’s like you’re letting a dog who just rolled in mud to be all over this stuff—”

“Bucky,” Steve says, very softly, and Bucky stops talking, looking at the ground. “Do you—Do you actually think that?”

“I don’t know,” Bucky whispers. Then, quietly, “He—he told me I was too dirty to, um, be on any furniture.” He winces. It’s never how he likes to talk about these things, in public in the middle of the day, but he owes Steve an explanation for his general freakishness. 

“Oh, Buck,” Steve says quietly. “Baby.” Bucky shifts his weight, staring down at Penny, looking up at him with gentle, oblivious eyes as she rubs against him. “That… that couldn’t be more false, Buck.” He exhales; Steve cups his face, and finally Bucky looks up. “Baby, I’m sorry.”

“‘S fine,” Bucky says weakly. “I didn’t tell you that. I just—I thought—I don’t know. I didn’t realize this would, um, make me feel that bad.” He rests his chin against Steve’s shoulder.

“We don’t have to do this right now, babe,” Steve tells him. “We can come back another time or do it online or get stuff from somewhere else, yeah? I just want you to be comfortable.”

Bucky takes a rattling breath. Steve’s shirt is very soft against his cheek. He clings to him.

“No, sorry,” he says, “I’m good, I’m fine.” He gulps again. “Are you sure? Those aren’t too much.”

Steve smooths a hand over his hair. “I benefit from those overpriced chairs too, you know.” Bucky chokes out a laugh. “Yeah, Buck, I’m sure.” He softens. “It’s your money, too, and you deserve every nice piece of furniture in the world.”

***

“I,” Steve says, pausing to kiss Bucky’s nose, “love you more than anything in the world.”

They’re cuddled up in a new armchair in the living room, big and plush, Bucky in Steve’s lap. He smiles and nuzzles against Steve’s neck. 

“Thank you,” Bucky whispers. “I love you so much.” And they stay there holding each other, safe in their ridiculously beautiful living room in their ridiculously beautiful home, warm and happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr ! i love these feel free to send them
> 
> sorry i haven't updated eitd i will this week ive been having a hard time w this chapter and also with my life but i think i got it on track now


	8. no doubt in my mind where you belong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anon: i love how you’ve mentioned that Bucky loves feminine and soft things I was wondering if u could write a drabble expanding on how he’s able to wear that stuff now since he’s reconnected with Steve and away from is parents. I know this is kinda vague lol so u could just ignore if it doesn’t make sense :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok this is short and not a thorough exploration of bucky being comfortable being feminine becauseeee actually in some near future chapters of eitd i am writing a lot of that :) but i hope you like this i had a v fun time writing it :)
> 
> Talking abt abuse in this

In one of the early weeks in their new place, Bucky comes home from a night he’d spent out to dinner with Wanda, hair hanging loosely in a cute braid and his nails painted lavender. He is already curled into Steve’s lap when Steve notices, raising his eyebrows as Bucky traces his nose.

“Wanda did it,” Bucky says, laughing lightly. He tenses and releases his hands as he’s talking.

Steve kisses his hair. “Looks nice.” He doesn’t miss the faint blush and the way Bucky inches closer to him and sighs.

“It’s nothing,” Bucky says, tripping over the words a little.

“Okay,” Steve assures him. “I love you.”

Bucky looks like he might say something else. Instead, squeezes Steve’s arm and mumbles that he’s going to shower, and that is the last of it for a few weeks.

***

It is nine am, and Steve is spreading cream cheese on a post run bagel when next to him, Bucky blurts out “I wanna paint my nails again.”

Steve looks up. “Okay,” he says, and smiles. “You should.” He goes back to his bagel.

“Really?” Bucky says, anxious. Steve sets aside the knife and plate to look at him, face soft.

“Yeah, baby, of course.”

“You don’t think it’s weird?”

Steve thumbs over his chin. “No, Buck, of course I don’t.”

Bucky’s dad hit him three times in his life. Once, it had been for fucking nothing when he was sixteen, a drunken, graceless strike for looking at his father like he was better than him. Once, after he found out about Bucky and Steve, although maybe it should count as more than once because when they’d dumped him in the wasteland of conversion camp, he’s drawn even more attention to himself with the two black eyes and split lip. The first time, though, he had been eleven. He’d spent an afternoon at Natasha’s, and she had slathered sparkly orange paint onto his nails as a joke that had secretly delighted him. Later, he had been reaching for a cup of water and his dad had grabbed his wrist and snarled, “What the fuck is this?” and when Bucky, stunned by the curse word, didn’t answer, his dad hit him across the face with the back of his hand and snapped, “Take that bullshit off and don’t let me see it again.” He had been so shocked and so unspeakably ashamed that he hadn’t told even Steve until five years later. That still throttles him each time he thinks about it, turning over hotly in his head each time he let Wanda paint them a million years ago.

There were other bad reactions, too.

“One time…” Bucky begins, and Steve knows he is about to say something terrible by the way his breath goes ragged in his throat. “One time Wanda did it for me. And, um, she sometimes did, and I usually took it off before I—before I went out. But I forgot, this one time, on a day, um, I had to see Alexander.” He squeezes his eyes shut; Steve bites his lip and starts to trace circles over his back. “He didn’t, um, he didn’t like it.” Bucky presses his face into Steve’s shoulder and tries not to think _you stupid little piece of shit, you don’t do anything to your body that I don’t tell you to, you understand? I told you to eat less and you’re still fucking fat, and now you pull this shit, you want me to make you cut off that pretty hair, take away the one thing about you that isn’t hideous, you little fucking slut—_

A few nights ago at Wanda’s was the first time he’s painted his nails since then.

“Hey,” Steve says softly. “Buck.” Bucky looks up; he has started, subconsciously, to scrape at his cuticles. He makes himself curl his fingers into a fist and stop. “Bucky, you know… you’re safe to… to do anything you want, okay? You won’t ever, ever be hurt for it.” It’s corny, and Steve says it so earnestly that Bucky smiles despite himself.

“I know,” he whispers, even though hearing it still feels incomparable to anything. “I just… it makes me feel, um, good, and… and clean, and nice” —Pretty, he thinks, but he doesn’t say it— “and Jennifer said that… that, um, there was no problem with it—”

“Bucky,” Steve says gently, “of course there’s no problem with it.” He kisses his forehead. “If you want it, you absolutely should.”

So two days later, he paints his nails on the bathroom, both hands shaking, slightly uneven, fingers slightly stained. It looks pretty anyway. He made Steve come with him to CVS, holding his hand while he selected the cherry blossom pink color, squeezing his hand and promising him there was nothing to worry about. Bucky only does his real hand, and he stares at it as it dries, breathing and reminding himself that he is safe and clean and loved.

Steve is in the studio, halfway through a painting, blue and green smears on his forehead and cheek. Bucky slips in behind him and wraps both his arms around him, nestling his chin into Steve’s shoulder. Steve sets his brush down to rub Bucky’s hand, hesitating just a moment when he brushes the cold, glossy paint, and glancing down. Bucky’s breath hitches.

“It looks great, baby,” Steve tells him. Bucky blushes, pressing his face into the back of Steve’s shoulder and exhaling. “C’mere.” Turning, Steve wraps his arms around Bucky, kissing the top of his head, breathing in the faint, sweet smell of rose shampoo. “You’re beautiful.”

“Steve,” Bucky says, embarrassed.

“You are,” Steve tells him. “You’re the most beautiful person in the whole world.”

Bucky sighs into Steve’s neck; those compliments are still unbearable. “I love you more than anything, you know,” Steve says.

“I love you, too,” Bucky whispers. “So much.” He throws his legs over Steve’s lap and leans heavily against him, weak with relief and the comfort of Steve petting his hair, other arm strong and secure holding Bucky against him.

“Hey, Buck?” Steve says. “It feel good?”

Bucky looks up, blinking. “Yeah,” he says softly. “It does.”

Steve kisses his forehead. “That’s good, baby.”

Bucky hums into his shirt. “Sorry,” he says, “I’ll let you finish—”

Steve doesn’t let go of him. “Stay,” he says, “any painting can wait for you.”

Bucky smiles, and he stays.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr! I love these i love u all !!


	9. we're safe here under the sheets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a drabble request, Bucky having a really realistic nightmare of Steve throwing him out of the apartment, Steve in the nightmare isn't angry or hateful just tired and doesn't want to take care of Bucky anymore, and Steve comforting Bucky when he wakes up? If that's all right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pal you know it's alright i have nothing else to do and can't leave my house! here u are :)

“Hey,” Steve says, “we need to talk.” He sits, hands in his lap.

They are in the living room; Bucky isn’t sure what time, maybe he just woke up, the lighting a little sharper than usual. This does not seem to matter. “Everything okay?” Bucky asks him. He sits beside him and touches his shoulder. Steve pulls back.

Steve looks the other way, mouth tight. “Um. I don’t want you here anymore.”

Bucky feels abruptly like he’s been dunked in ice water and held under. “What?”

“I want you to leave.”

The room feels clammy and surreal; everything glistens a bit, like the beginning of some disease. “Steve, what?”

Steve purses his lips and doesn’t say anything. He pinches at a stitch on their pillow.

“Steve, I—what did I—I don’t understand—”

“Fine,” Steve says, and looks at him. His face is completely blank. “I don’t love you. I don’t have the time or patience to wake up every other night and calm you down for an hour and make sure you aren’t freaking out every time I touch you.” He doesn’t sound angry, exactly, just inconvenienced. Bucky finds himself wishing Steve would hit him, it would at least quell the shame a bit.

“Steve,” Bucky whispers. He had told himself a million years ago when he first stumbled back into Steve’s life that when Steve got sick of him, he wouldn’t argue or beg or bargain, he would thank Steve and leave without inconveniencing him any more, but then months passed, then more than a year, and Steve had stayed through every nightmare and flashback and panic attack, through a titanic, high profile trial and through almost being killed and through stalkers and through his name being splashed on the cover of every tabloid in the tristate area, accusing him of hiring a live in prostitute and of conspiring against Alexander Pierce, through abandoned sex attempts and Bucky pushing him away in preparation of this very event, and somewhere along the way Bucky had begun to think of this as permanent. He feels like his lungs have been restricted by barbed wire. “Steve, please. I need you.”

Steve looks up, irritated. “I don’t need you, Bucky,” he says. “Doesn’t seem like a fair deal for both of us, does it?”

“I—we—this is my—my house, too,” Bucky manages.

Steve scoffs. “Did you contribute a dime to buying this place?”

Bucky flinches. “Where—Where am I supposed to go?” he whispers. 

“Call Wanda or Scott. Call Natasha. I don’t really care.”

“Steve,” Bucky whispers. He has started to cry, and Steve looks disgusted by it. 

He stands and turns away. “Get out, Bucky.” Then he walks through a doorway that they have never had and Bucky becomes aware that the lighting is slanted all wrong like the sun has come up from the wrong direction and everything has a gummy, shimmery quality to it and Penny isn’t there and none of this is really happening.

Bucky wakes up and jerks into sitting, breathing quickly. The light is still on; next to him, Steve has a sketchbook leaned on his laptop and is drawing something. He startles a bit.

“You okay, baby?” Steve says. The sketchbook is set aside, forgotten. “Bad dream?”

Bucky blinks. Penny has clambered up next to him and is nuzzling his face. He looks around and swallows.

“Yeah,” he manages.

Steve looks so sad. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, I didn’t realize, I would’ve woken you up.” Bucky nods, a little slow; his body is still trying to get used to the relief. “Okay if I touch you?”

Bucky nods, slumping against him pathetically quickly, Steve’s arms steady and welcoming. “Wasn’t that kind of nightmare,” he mumbles.

Steve is stroking his hair, slow and even. “Yeah? You wanna talk about it?”

Bucky winces. “Um.” His reality recalibrates itself; Steve is right here next to him, holding him, patient and not at all angry, kissing the top of his hair and asking him if he wants to talk about a nightmare. “It just—It just felt really real.” Steve keeps moving his hand over Bucky’s hair, quiet, letting him talk. “You, um. You told me you didn’t want me here anymore.” He winces, cheeks hot, he sounds pathetic, he is pathetic, that is a terrible thing to say to Steve who has done nothing but love him and take care of him—

“Baby,” Steve says softly, “I’m sorry, Buck. I promise you, that will never, ever, ever happen.”

Bucky nods, screwing his eyes shut against crying. He presses his face deeper into Steve’s shoulder.

“I love you so much,” Steve goes on. “You’re my person, Buck. You aren’t getting rid of me, ever.”

“Yeah?” Bucky manages, forcing a laugh.

“Yep.” Steve kisses his head. 

“Sorry,” Bucky says faintly.

“Don’t be sorry,” Steve tells him. “I’m here for life, baby, you’ve got me. I need you.”

Bucky smiles despite himself. “Me, too,” he says. 

Their room smells faintly of cinnamon sugar, left behind from the candle Bucky blew out before he fell asleep. He breathes that in, this unmistakeable marker of being home and being safe. Steve keeps playing with his hair after he closes his eyes. He is wrapped in safety, flooded with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr :) love u all


	10. we can live in love in slow motion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anon: hi!! i was wondering for a drabble request what bucky and steve’s first official date would be like when they were younger. obviously they were best friends before but i wondered what they would do when they got together. i’m not sure if you’ve mentioned this in the story before if you did sorry i blanked out lol

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did i name this after a 1d song? absolutely because its a stevebucky song in this universe
> 
> i love teenage bucky and steve this prompt was very fun thank u :') i have not mentioned this yet hehe

A week and a half after the first time they kiss, Steve says, “So I guess we should go on a date.”

“Yeah?”

“We are dating.”

“I thought this was a date.”

Steve and Bucky are sitting on Steve’s bed, leaning against the wall watching a compilation of best dog videos. Steve has an arm over Bucky’s shoulders and Bucky is leaning his head against Steve’s shoulder and even though his hand has grown numb, Steve doesn’t move.

“You’ve got extremely low standards, Barnes.”

Bucky tilts his head up and grins. Steve is extremely aware of how close they are. Lately, every second he is not kissing Bucky feels like wasted time. He doesn’t know, now that he has unlocked that extreme privilege, why he would ever do anything else with his time. 

“Yeah? You gonna wine and dine me?”

“Hm.” Steve says. “I was thinking somewhere in the twenty dollar range.”

Bucky laughs, sitting up now. “So where do you wanna go? I’ll go on a date with you.”

“We could see a movie,” Steve suggests, the first thing that comes to his mind, the cliche filed underneath ‘date’ that high school movies have embedded into his head. The problem is that he has done none of that, his entire idea of romance orbits wanting Bucky to love him, and now that that is real he isn’t sure where to go from there to ensure it stays that way. A movie seems like a foolproof place to start. “And get food,” he adds.

Bucky smiles. “Sure, Stevie. You can take me to a movie and dinner.”

“Oh, I’m taking you?”

“You asked.” Bucky giggles; Steve feigns disgruntledness, and Bucky kisses his cheek quickly, pulling back fast like he isn’t sure he should’ve. Steve, smiling, leans in and pecks him on the nose, quick as a hummingbird at a flower, and elation ripples between them. This is what Steve has hoped for in all of his wildest dreams. What has blossomed here is too beautiful and indefinable to understand, the thing Steve thinks religions and philosophers have tried to pin down, sparkling between him and Bucky in this small bedroom.

***

Saturday comes, movie tickets are purchased on Fandango, meeting times are set. Steve arrives at seven like he said he would, not dressed up but looking nice, having showers and run a brush through his hair and put on a slightly nicer shirt. Bucky did the same. He is unreasonably nervous, the formality of this leaving something uncertain.

“Hi,” Bucky says when he gets the door.

“Hi,” Steve replies. 

Bucky rocks his weight. “You look… handsome.” Steve snorts. “Shut up!” Bucky defends himself. “I’ve never done this. And you do look handsome.”

“Thanks. I changed.”

“I see that.”

“You look handsome too.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yep.”

Bucky grins for a moment. Then he grabs Steve’s shoulder and pulls him inside, shuts the door, and kisses him.

They have only done this a few times, which is probably why is still turns Bucky’s heart inside out again, flattens his world out to something soft and pretty and hazy. When he pulls back, Steve is blushing. Steve is absolutely sure he is, too.

“You ready?” Steve says, and Bucky nods and they head out, not holding hands so close to their houses but shoulders brushing, smiling privately.

This is nothing they haven’t done before, Bucky reminds himself. He has taken the subway with Steve a million times to a a hundred different locations, he has gone with him to this very movie theater because it’s nicer than the one closest to them and the tickets are cheaper than the Cobble Hill one, he has bought food with him and sat in restaurants with him, pretending his heart didn’t move in figure eights when their knees touched. This isn’t new.

But of course it is. He has never begun these outings with a kiss, he has never debated whether or not to take Steve’s hand or worried that their families would materialize behind them, he has never wondered if he should pay for both of their tickets or if he should let Steve do it, if that would change now. 

In the subway car, safely away from anyone who might recognize them, Steve takes Bucky’s hand without looking. A thrill runs up Bucky’s spine; he squeezes, locking their fingers closer together, and smiles.

He also, for the first time, becomes aware of other people’s gaze on them as a couple. Bucky is used to being stared at by people pretending not to look, trying to gauge the amputation. Steve is even used to it, being attached at the hip to him, although Steve usually stares rudely back, eyebrow raised, until they look away. This, apparently, is not very different.

But he doesn’t let go of Steve’s hand, not when the subway doors open into the humidity of the seventh avenue station and they ascend up the stairs, smiling shyly.

Bucky had been anxious, when they first agreed to be a couple, about awkwardness settling over the otherwise perfect ease of their friendship, but it had turned out to be obsolete. There is no discomfort; the moments of uncertainty, when they should kiss or put an arm around each other, whether to say _baby_ or _babe_. Even those, though, are brief, fleeting moments that are resolved as they come up, this path being worn down by the two of them. They are the ones deciding whether it is good to hold hands and kiss, whether pet names are for them, and the decision to embrace it comes as easily as loving each other does.

They buy pizza first in a little shop with linoleum flooring and signs on the wall that say things like _I got a pizza for my wife—best trade I ever made!_ Tinny pop music rings in the speakers, and they talk the way they always would, about school and their friends and the summer that is unfolding in front of them, glossy and hopeful and full of untouched, thrilling potential now that they are in love. The movie theater is maybe ten minutes from there and they walk slowly, enjoying what it feels like to walk and hold hands under a now romantic dipping sun, dodging the slightly invasive looks of other teenagers and of adults.

Steve buys the popcorn and Bucky buys the Cherry Coke like they have every time they’ve gone to the movies for the last several years. They sit turned towards each other, Bucky’s head on Steve’s shoulder, Steve’s arm over him.

“Last time we were here,” Steve says sheepishly, “I paid attention to you the whole time so I could reach for popcorn when you did and touch your hand.”

The admission is so soft and cherished that Bucky bites his lip against emotion that threads through him. He ducks his head into Steve’s collarbone in lieu of the kiss that feels too difficult in public, and Steve gets it.

They are seeing X-Men, which Steve likes and Bucky tolerates. “Just means I get to choose next time,” he tells Steve as they leave the theater, and Steve rolls his eyes, taking Bucky’s hand again, and says, “Guess I’ll brace myself for a romcom, then.”

“Gonna make you see a horror movie, actually,” Bucky says. Steve shoulders him, mock annoyed. “Wanna walk through the park?”

It’s easier now in the dark, no one looking at them. They feel intensely alone in the park, like the city is glittering miles away along with all of the other, unimportant people in the world. The rhythm of their fast, excited feet echoes over the breeze, louder than it should be, like they’re carrying something giant and desperately important.

Bucky looks at Steve and finds Steve is already looking at him. He smiles and feels a blush spread over his cheeks. Steve grins.

There is a playground in front of them, poking out of the dark grass and cement. They used to go to here in the summer, because the Bay Ridge one didn’t have sprinklers, or whenever their parents went to Park Slop, for dinner, for their own movie. Vivid memories flush Bucky, his hand in Steve’s here, tiny and sure, Steve pulling him up the steps, wanting to go down the biggest slide, his mother fretting from a few yards away about how high he was going after the amputation, a blur of color and high pitched noise, the very specific sensation of childhood where nothing ever ended.

The playground is locked, so they hoist themselves over the low fence. Inside, they might as well be shrouded by their own kingdom of slides and firepoles and swings; it is so still and quiet that it’s like no one else has ever been there. They look at each other and laugh, breathless with the thrill of doing something they aren’t supposed to.

Bucky points to the monkey bars. “You fell from there and sprained your ankle once.”

Steve fake scowls. “Yeah, I remember. Thanks.”

Bucky laughs. They walk another few yards to the jungle gym that had once seemed enormous, really only a few feet taller than they are, now. Underneath it is a little round tunnel, maybe five feet wide and four feet tall.

“Well?” Steve says. When Bucky raises his eyebrows, Steve jerks his head towards it, then ducks and folds himself small to fit in. Exasperated, Bucky follows.

The cylinder is too small for one of them to fit comfortable, let alone both of them. As kids, they had stood in there, but right now they hunch over, backs curved into parentheses, facing each other and laughing, their knees pressed together. 

“Remember the game we used to play in here?”

“Oh, god,” Steve says. “Kind of. Were we superheroes?”

“Oh, you know it.” Bucky grins. 

“Sometimes cowboys, though,” Steve remembers. “Or soldiers.”

“One of us would hide in here so the other could save him.”

“Seems like we didn’t really get the point of hiding.”

“Maybe you didn’t,” Bucky says. “I just wanted you to find me.”

Steve laughs, lifting his head too much so it slams the metal, then groaning. “We sure hung out in here for a long time after, though.”

“We were waiting out the bad guys,” Bucky says. “Obviously.”

“My bad.” The light off Steve’s phone flickers out; Steve clicks it so he’s faintly visible again. “You know what I really wanted to do, though?”

“Yeah?” Bucky says breathlessly.

Steve places both hands on the side of his face and kisses him. Bucky surges forward into it with such enthusiasm that they both jostle the side of the tunnel, dull brassy sound ringing through the silence. They laugh. Steve tries to move back without breaking the kiss and ends up stumbling slightly, catching himself on the rubber playground flooring with one hand until they have both lowered themselves to lying down, the top halves of their bodies free from their childhood fort, kissing lightly.

The shimmering oval moon above them washes Steve in pale blue-grey light, making him look bright and immortal. Bucky feels terribly grown up, kissing his new boyfriend surrounded by multicolored structures that they used to climb over, knees scraped, clothes dirty. 

“Hi,” Bucky says breathlessly when they pull apart, teeth clicking clumsily, sending a pleasant ringing through his skull.

“Hi,” Steve answers, staring at him like he has just discovered something massive and groundbreaking although what they are discovering is each other, the new shape of their relationship with all of its crevices and indents folding into something spectacular.

Bucky stands, brushing his jeans off, then pulls Steve to his feet. They sway for a moment, gathering their balance, and then Steve puts an arm around his shoulders and Bucky melts into his side.

“First of many?” Steve says when they get home that night, hovering outside of Bucky’s, wishing they could hold hands or kiss.

“Of course.”

Steve smiles, delighted. Bucky glances around, then risks it with a quick peck to Steve’s lips, so fast and cautious that even if anyone had seen, they couldn’t know what it was. Steve is looking at him with a tenderness Bucky thought was reserved for movie screens.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah.” Steve squeezes his shoulder; a would-be kiss, Bucky tells himself. “See you tomorrow, Buck. I love you.”

The sparks that spring through Bucky when he hears that have not yet dulled with time. “Love you, too,” he says, grinning unabashedly. Steve waits until he is inside, the door closed behind him to turn back to his own house, full of the happy-missing that comes with loving someone like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr im not ignoring ur other requests im just slow at writing lately lmao i will do them i love u all


	11. may these memories break our fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anon: im rlly curious about sam and nat's relationship with bucky and steve, i feel like i didnt get enough friendship exposition. could we explore their friendships, or how sam and nat react to seeing bucky again/The Bucky Trauma, etc? thx and no pressure ily

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok there's a part of this that i wrote back in the like first couple tmhtb chapters and then didn't use it and idk why because i like it, anyway this is a mess but here u go i had fun with it

It is desperately cold the day Natasha sees Bucky again. She is supposed to be driving upstate with Peggy to see her family, but she has forgotten that; as she leaves Steve’s apartment, she is stunned beyond any ability to focus. Outside, everything looks wrong. The light has taken on a tilted, flimsy quality. She shuts her eyes against a terrible headache.

The last time she saw Bucky had been nothing special. It is only significant because of what came after. They hung out at her place drinking Newman’s lemonade and talking about their summer plans, which for her, were various trips with her family to the Cape and New Hampshire and for him, were hanging around Brooklyn with Steve completing their jobs and saving money. She had wondered, privately, if their moving in together plans were wise at their age, and then decided it didn’t matter; Bucky and Steve weren’t quite comparable with any couple their age or any age. Bucky asked her if they could have a key for when she was away. She asked if he was fucking kidding. He told her he was but if she’d said yes, he meant it. They took the subway to meet Steve at the ice cream store in Park Slope that he was working at and he gave them freebies. They sat in the park until the trees began to shiver with exhaustion and they took the subway back. They’d said goodbye in the subway car right before Steve and Bucky’s transfer. It had been so quick, his face hazy in her exhaustion, a quick hug that she could barely be bothered with, a last glimpse of them through a dirty window, Steve’s arm over his shoulder, kissing quickly as they headed for the stairs.

That summer was the worst time of her life. Aside from Steve, Bucky was her best friend, and she could hardly talk to Steve about how badly she was missing Bucky for support. Her parents, appropriately appalled at the sudden disappearance of their daughter’s best friend, had tried the few routes possible to figure it out, but there was really nothing to be done; Bucky hadn’t been reported missing, wasn’t missing, according to his parents, it wasn’t illegal for them not to disclose their son’s location to the two people he loved most in the world. 

She hated her first year of college. She spent most weekends at home, she withdrew from three classes, she briefly dated and got cheated on by a junior who sold psychedelics out of her dorm. It wasn’t until almost a full year later that she felt the wound that had opened in her chest at losing Bucky begin to heal, raw sores dulling, pain enough to live with but not so much that it stopped everything.

In the car, Peggy is applying chapstick. “Hey,” she says, and then, blinking, “you okay, babe?”

“Um,” Natasha says. “Just, um, processing.” 

“Nat,” Peggy says. “What? Steve okay?”

“I—he—you know Bucky?” Her voice is strange and thin. Peggy does not know Bucky, but she knows of him. Natasha told her a few weeks into their relationship, right after she’d introduced her to Steve, and Peggy had listened, been appropriately sympathetic, and then said, “God, no wonder Steve’s such a wreck.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s there.” Saying it sends a shudder skittering through her.

“What?”

“I just saw him. He’s with Steve.”

“Well—God, Nat, that—that’s a good thing, right? That’s great.”

“Yeah,” she says faintly. She’s calling Sam.

“Hey,” he answers, “what’s up?”

“You,” she says breathlessly, “will not _fucking_ believe this.”

Sam says, after a beat, “Did you just see Steve?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Did you—did you know?”

Silence. “He told me.”

“What the fuck? When?”

“A couple days ago. Not even. He just wanted help.”

“Help with what?”

More silence. Tentatively, Sam says, “How much did he tell you?”

“Nothing. What?”

Sam sighs. “You can’t tell Steve I’m telling you this.”

“Fuck, fine.”

“I think—I think something terrible happened to him, Nat.”

“What do you mean?”

Sam says, uncomfortably, “Look, I don’t—I don’t know. I think he might’ve been abused pretty badly. Steve, um. Says he was a prostitute.”

Natasha leans her head into her hand and closes her eyes. “Fuck. Fuck. You’re kidding.”

“I don’t know much,” Sam says quietly. “Don’t tell Steve I told you. I think it’s… it’s not good.”

“He looked so bad,” she says, and feels her heart sink into itself with exhaustion.

“You saw him?” Sam sounds surprised.

“You haven’t?”

“No.”

Outside, rain streaks itself in short bursts against the window. “Yeah. He’s really skinny. It’s scary.”

“Yeah.” Sam sounds so sad. “Hey, I gotta go, talk later?”

“Yeah,” she says.

Peggy takes one hand of the wheel to squeeze Natasha’s. She hangs up the phone and starts to cry.

***

The first time she spends time with him, she leaves and bursts into tears. He has been compressed into someone who misery glitters off of. He barely lifts his gaze to her, and when he talks, his voice is soft and tentative like he is waiting to be corrected. She doesn’t know what to do.

“Tell me about Peggy,” Bucky says, finally, a little nervous. They're in Central Park, just walking. They have been skirting around conversations about anything real. She feels like crying.

Natasha smiles, though. “She’s amazing. I met her sophomore year, we’ve been dating about two years now. She’s British, she wants to be a lawyer too, she’s the most gorgeous girl I’ve ever met. She’s so smart. She doesn’t take shit from anyone. You’d like her, I think.”

“That’s what Steve said,” Bucky tells her. 

“He didn’t like her at first,” she says, smiling down. “They’ve grown on each other.”

Bucky smiles, forced. "I'm happy for you, Nat."

“Jesus, Bucky, we’ve missed you,” she says, unable to stop herself. “I’ve missed you. God.”

“I missed you, too,” he whispers. She studies his face, and she is certain he’s not lying. It makes her feel better and inexplicably worse about the wasted years.

She bristles; not hostile, but almost confrontational. “Why didn’t you call any of us?”

Bucky withers a little. “Nat…”

 _Be careful,_ Steve had mumbled to her, as Bucky was getting his coat on. _Be nice, Nat._

 _I’m always nice,_ she’d snapped, and Steve gave her a weary look.

_Be extra nice. He’s… please._

“I mean, Christ, Buck. What happened? Why wouldn’t you call Steve? He’s been a fucking mess for four years—”

“Steve is fine,” Bucky says quietly, shrunken back. “Steve’s got a goddamn penthouse and an exhibit at the Met. He’s alright.”

Natasha shakes her head. “You weren’t there, Bucky.” She just sounds sad now. “He’s been a goddamn disaster. It’s… he’s been so sad. It was really, really bad for the first three years. It still is, he’s just gotten better at hiding it.” Bucky swallows, pain flickering across his face. As far as he can tell, Steve’s doing beautifully. When he blanches, she goes on, “Bucky, what’d you expect? He loved you so goddamn much. He was so unbelievably fucked up after it happened. He stayed with Sam and got hammered alone every night and called your cell phone just to hear your voice.” Her eyes are bright with tears now. “Jesus, Bucky, did you think of how we were? Did you expect Steve to just up and move on with his life? He loved you.” Bucky winces. “I loved you. I love you. You were my best friend. We thought you were dead. Or, I did. I didn’t say it to Steve because I thought he might kill himself if he thought that. If you—god, Barnes, you fucking asshole.” Before Bucky can apologize or start crying or turn away, she hugs him, face buried in his shoulder, and he hugs her back and bites back tears. A few people walk by and cast them looks. They stay there for a good minute. Bucky has relaxed and is clinging to her now.

“Why didn’t you call us?” she says when she pulls. She isn’t yelling at him anymore. The anger has been struck from her. Her voice is soft. She’s genuinely asking.

Bucky’s throat swells shut. “C’mon, Nat,” he says finally, huffing out a laugh that hurts his throat. “You guys had fucking NYU and Columbia and a million exhibits, and I was on the street giving guys sex for twenty bucks.” Shame flushes him, but she doesn’t react.

“Buck…” she says softly, all of the anger gone.

He shakes his head. “I couldn’t, Nat. Not like that.”

“I love you,” she says stubbornly. “Steve loved you. Loves you. We wouldn’t have cared. We missed you so fucking much.”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whispers.

She shakes her head. “No, don’t—” she cuts herself off, because she doesn’t know what to say. “I’m really glad you’re here,” she says finally.

Bucky gives her the closest thing to a real smile she’s gotten. 

***

Sam’s first interactions with Bucky are equally discouraging. He only sees him quickly, meeting Steve at his place for lunch. He’d known he might. Steve told him Bucky has tended to disappear to the guest room when anyone came to the door, which has been limited to deliveries, but when Sam knocks and Steve opens it, Bucky is behind him, arm crossed over his chest.

His hair is long. Sam hadn’t expected that. That is the first thing he notices; the second is that Natasha was right, he is terribly thin. Sam is startled by the wave of pain that sweeps over him. This is his friend, a guy he has had meals and teased Steve with, and the urge to hug him is sudden and strong but he doesn’t.

“Hey, Bucky,” he says instead, “it’s really good to see you.”

Bucky gives him a practiced smile. “You too, Sam.”

“Hope you’re giving Steve a hard time about his ridiculous house,” Sam says. That gets a slightly more real smile out of Bucky, but only slightly. He looks down, shy.

“Ha,” Steve says. “Bucky’s way nicer than you.”

Sam fake scoffs. He has just decided Steve is still in love with Bucky. He’d been fairly sure of it before, but he watches Steve watch him, the sorrow in his eyes heavy enough to sink ships, desperately in love, just short of saying, _please, what do you need, I love you._

Bucky fake smiles again. He’s pulling at a thread on his sweater.

“Um,” Steve says, “we should head out. You sure you don’t wanna come, Buck?”

Bucky winces. “No, I don’t wanna intrude.”

“You’re not intruding,” Sam and Steve both say. Bucky shifts his weight. “No pressure, though,” Steve adds. “Text me if you want me to bring you anything, okay?”

Bucky nods. Sam waves to him before turning after Steve.

He waits until they are in the elevator to exchange a look. Steve runs a hand through his hair. “Better or worse than you were expecting?”

“Um,” Sam says, because he does not want to admit it’s worse. “The same, I guess.”

“I’m worried he’s gonna leave,” Steve whispers, and although he says worried, Sam knows he is terrified. His voice quivers uncharacteristically. Sam squeezes his shoulder.

“I don’t think he is, man,” he tells him. He believes that even though he has no evidence for it.

“You see how skinny he is?” Steve whispers.

No point in denying it. “Yeah.”

Steve nods vaguely, staring forward. “I wanna fucking kill whoever did this to him,” he says, and then he grinds his palms over his eyes.

“I know,” Sam says softly, rubbing his hand in what he hopes are soothing little circles. “I’m sorry, Steve.”

***

Sam and Natasha are together when Steve tells them he and Bucky are back together. They could not be less surprised. Bucky and Steve are like those trees that have grown next to each other for centuries until their roots cross one another and their branches intertwine, so tight and settled that to try and disconnect them would bring both trees up by the roots and send dirt spraying everywhere.

He texts them both to let them know. “Thank god,” Natasha says. They’re sitting in a cafe close to her apartment, attempting to study.

“We knew that was gonna happen,” Sam says, but he is relieved nonetheless. Over the last few weeks he’s only seen Bucky a few more times, and each time he has convinced himself and tried to convince Steve that he’s improving, but really, there has been very little indication that he is. This, Sam thinks, is good. Steve had told him they’ve been holding hands and falling asleep next to each other and Sam had told him he was being an idiot, why wouldn’t they have a conversation about this, but Steve had maintained that he wasn’t going to pressure Bucky into anything, which Sam can’t argue with. This makes him happy. He knows Steve has spent every second between losing and finding Bucky aching for him and loving him, and the way Steve came back to life almost immediately upon finding him was a near miraculous transition.

And Bucky, he thinks, deserves to be loved like that. After what happened to him, which is still a hazy gray question mark but which Sam is starting to theorize is worse than any of them could imagine, Steve is good for him. It would be very hard to find anyone who loves more tenderly than Steve loves Bucky.

***

Fourteen months later, they are at Bucky and Steve’s house. They are all comfortably tipsy, even Bucky; he nestles his head into Natasha’s shoulder, because Steve had gotten up and she is the closest one there. When he’s comfortable, he is a giggly and touchy drunk; Natasha remembers this from high school. It endears her that it hasn’t changed. She has an arm over his shoulders and they are teasing Sam about a girl he’d had a crush on in tenth grade while he rolls his eyes. Everything is okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr :)


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anon: Bucky has not been in touch with Wanda for awhile, and she gets called in by the police to identify a body. She calls in Scott for support, The body look a lot like Bucky, but it isn't and when they get home to her apartment they find Bucky waiting for them and there is crying and cuddles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok i edited this slightly it takes place at the beginning of tmhtb when bucky is first with steve but the gist is the same

It does not take Wanda and Scott long to start worrying. Even though Bucky wasn’t technically living with them, for the last several months he has been there more nights then not, has all but moved back into the little closet room that used to be his. But even when he isn’t there, he never, ever goes more than a day without talking or texting at least one of them because they do not let him. They know how much risk he is at every night and he has promised Wanda he’ll let them know he’s okay when they don’t see him, so when she wakes up one morning in early November and Bucky isn’t in her living room or her messages, she is visited by a deep, unshakable tremor of panic.

“Scott?” she yells. He’s still asleep, so it takes him a second to emerge from his room, wincing and rubbing his eyes.

“What?”

“Have you heard from Bucky?”

He straightens up a little. “Um, no. I saw him yesterday before he went out, but not since then.”

“Nothing?”

He glances at his phone. “No. You haven’t?”

She shakes her head. Scott is an admirably cool headed person, fantastic to diffuse panic in a crisis. She is not. Wanda presses her hands to her temples, and Scott works his jaw a little. “Have you called him?”

She shakes her head, and then does that. When it goes straight to answering machine, she sucks in a breath and says, “Oh, god.”

“Wanda,” Scott says, squeezing her shoulder. “Breathe. Look he—he’s done this before, alright? I bet he’s with a client and his phone died and he’ll be back tonight.”

She nods, because the energy required to consider the alternative would simply make her collapse. 

But he isn’t back that night. Scott sits on the couch, trying to focus on the code he is finishing but unable to concentrate long enough to produce anything of substance. Wanda is working and the house is empty and dark. He gets up, pours himself a glass of orange juice, and paces. He calls Bucky and gets sent to voicemail again. Panic really is starting to take shape now, but he bites his lip, downs two Nyquils, and nearly prays that when he wakes up, Bucky will be there.

They go to the police on the third day. Neither of them want to, but they are getting desperate and no one else has heard from Bucky and the possibilities are endlessly awful, too terrible to think about without getting a splitting headache. They wait at the precinct for sixty-seven minutes before anyone talks to them, and then they are herded into a gray, tight room with a cop who speaks like a caricature of a smoker and looks at them like he can’t imagine a bigger inconvenience.

“We called earlier,” Scott starts, “about reporting a missing person.”

“Mhm,” the cop says. “We looked into your person. Did you know he’s got a record?”

“He got arrested for prostitution when he was nineteen years old,” Scott says, working very hard against snarling it. “He’s a kid, and we haven’t seen him in three days.”

“Have you tried calling him?”

“Yeah,” Wanda snaps. “First thing we tried, actually. Funny.”

He casts her a bored, condescending look. “What would you like me to do?”

Scott says, “I think someone might have done something to him.” The guy raises his eyebrows, humoring them. “There’s a guy who—a lot of people have hurt him, but there was a guy who was abusing him for a long time.”

“Do you have the name?” They both bite their lip. “Address? Description?”

“No,” Scott says weakly.

The cop sneers a little. “Look,” he says coldly. “The person you’re talking about has a criminal record. He’s an adult. He’s probably off with a john. I can’t put my resources into looking for a hooker.”

Scott’s vision goes briefly white with anger. “He’s twenty years old,” he nearly snarls. “He’s in danger.”

“Sorry,” the cop says, not sounding sorry at all. “Nothing I can do.”

Then, one week later, Wanda calls Scott while he is leaving a job interview, gasping and crying. “They want me to identify a body,” she sobs, “oh, god, Scott. Oh, god.”

“Wanda, breathe,” Scott says, although he feels like he has been dunked in ice water, jerked back up, and thrust under again. “When? Now?”

“Yeah.” She draws another panicked breath. 

“Are you at home?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, okay. Fuck. I’ll meet you at the precinct, alright?”

“Scott, they said—they said it’s a young guy with one arm.”

Scott’s voice is hoarse and thin when he says, “Okay. Okay. I’m coming.”

The subway ride over there gives Scott a lot of time to plummet. Bucky is twenty. He is a teenager, a kid. He likes animals and gets excited when he beats Scott in video games. He has come home more times than Scott can count crying and shaking and beaten and forcibly drunk or drugged and Scott rubbed his back while he cried or held his hair back while he got sick.

Scott has failed him. He worked so, so hard to make sure Bucky was safe, but Bucky was never safe, he was a fucking child who slept with terrible men for fifty dollars and Scott had allowed him to, he fucking failed him and now he is going to have to go identify Bucky’s body because someone killed him or because he killed himself. 

Wanda is already there, leaning against the wall, thinking about how she lost everyone she loved already once and if she has lost Bucky now she will not understand why she’s been given a life and forced to endure it. Scott is very pale. He puts his arms around her and she hugs him back and they are both shaking.

She holds his hand while they’re lead into the back. She’s trying not to cry. At the desk, Scott says, his voice as soft as Wanda has ever heard it, “We were—we were called in to ID a body.”

She must wave someone over, because some time later they are being led down foreboding cement stairs into a little cell of a room full of forensic equipment. Wanda’s heartbeat has taken on a gravitational pull of its own, as big and solid as anything else in the room with her. Scott has his eyes closed, his face ashen.

The cop, a different one than the scumbag who they had spoken to before, says, a little impatiently, “Is this your friend?”

Wanda makes herself look, and her body goes to ash with relief. _Thank god,_ she thinks, and then understands that is a terrible thing to think about seeing a body, but it’s all she can think. _Thank god, thank god, thank god._ The guy is missing his right arm, and his hair is lighter and shorter than Bucky’s and he’s at least five years older. She looks at Scott. His eyes are closed again in relief.

“It’s not him,” Wanda manages.

“Are you sure?” the cop says, mildly annoyed. 

“He’s missing his other arm. And he’s younger. And his hair is different.”

The cop looks at Scott, who nods. He sighs. “Alright. Thanks for coming in.”

Outside, she throws her arms around Scott. They both stand there, hugging and crying and repeating, “Thank god, Jesus Christ, thank god.”

***

It does not, however, solve where Bucky is. The relief wears thin after a few hours. The weeks that follow that are some of the grimmest they’ve had. They fight more than they ever have in their four years of friendship, petty and vicious arguments about unloading the dishwasher and using too much water in the shower. Wanda gets out of bed one night for a glass of water and finds Scott on the couch, head in his hands, sobbing, and she doesn’t say anything, just sits next to him in the grief because there is nothing for them to even say or do, all they have is what is happening to them and the fucking mystery of where Bucky is.

One morning, in early December, Wanda is washing her face when her phone lights up with Bucky’s name and she nearly drops it under running water. _I’m sorry, I’m okay_ , it says, and she almost bursts into tears.

 _where the fuck areyou_ she writes back.

 _staying with someone, don’t worry_.

“Wanda!” Scott yells from the kitchen, his voice hoarse. She brushes a towel over her face and opens the door. “He texted me.”

“Fuck, me too.” As she’s talking, she types, hands shaking, _not gonna fly i’m worried you got fucking kidnapped or something._

_not kidnapped i promise. I can have lunch this week_

“Call him,” Scott says, vaguely hysterical. She does, phone held between them on speaker.

“Hey.” Bucky’s voice is very soft and small, but him, safe and calm as he’s ever sounded.

“Bucky?” Wanda manages. “Oh, god. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I’m okay. Really.”

“Bucky,” Scott says, pale with relief, “where are you, bud? Are you safe?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. It’s a long story.”

“Are you alone?”

“No, I’m… I’m with someone. He’s good.”

They exchange an alarmed glance. “Where are you, Buck?” Scott asks again.

“I’m in the city,” he says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you. I can see you.”  
“Okay, okay, Buck. How about tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Bucky says. “We’ll figure out a place?”

“Yeah,” Wanda says. “Yeah. I love you, Bucky.”

“Love you, kiddo,” Scott adds, voice tight.

“I love you guys,” Bucky says softly. “See you soon.” Then he hangs up. Wanda slumps against the wall and puts her hands to her face.

“I guess I shouldn’t come,” Scott says. He gets it, but it still hurts.

Wanda bites her lip. “If he’s been with some guy who’s been hurting him, I don’t want him to freak out about another man being here.”

“I know,” Scott says. “I know. Just… call me after, okay?”

“Of course.” She stands in this for a moment, in the relief of it. “Oh, thank god.”

“Yeah,” Scott agrees weakly. “Christ. I’m gonna kill him.”

“Me, too.” But they are both smiling. The world around them lifts a little, lighter and more bearable than it has been in weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr :)


	13. penny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> madelinehun: i would love to see more with penny. maybe the process of the boys getting her and how they adjusted?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god maddie requested this a million years ago i am so sorry to be getting to this now but i hope you like it ahh
> 
> also! i read a lot and have spoken to some people with service animals but i am in no way an expert so if i ever mess anything up either here or in the bigger fic PLEASE don't hesitate to correct me!!

They bring Penny home after two weeks of intensive training at the facility in Westchester that trained her. They’ve been driving back and forth for it; it’s not too long, and they’re still in the middle of looking for houses and they’ve just been away for two and a half weeks in Europe, but it’s an entirely new thrill all the same to be able to bring her home.

The wait wasn’t too long and was helped by Jennifer, who pulled some strings with her friend who trains service dogs to get them in faster. She was the one who suggested it way back while they were still prepping for the trial, when Bucky had told her he was constantly flinching when men brushed past him on the street and still hadn’t gotten the nightmares and panic attacks under control. With the carnage that followed, Bucky had forgotten about it, and when they got home from Spain and she called him to tell him they needed to meet him and approve their new apartment but in all likelihood, there was a German Shepherd available for him, Bucky had been startled. Steve was elated.

“I just—” Bucky began, tucking himself closer to Steve in bed. “I don’t want—What if I’m—I’m taking her from someone who really needs her?”

“Bucky,” Steve said, “baby, you—she’s gonna help you as much as anyone, yeah?” Bucky nodded, but he was still unsure, and when they drove up a few days later he’d been anxious, leg bouncing in the passenger seat.

Penny, the first time they met her, trotted up to them and sniffed each of their hands, then nuzzled at Bucky’s until he’d scratched her ears. Bucky had mailed a tee shirt of his in for her to sleep with, an instruction that surprised them but that, when Penny leaned her soft flank into him and panted, appeared to have worked. Bucky looked up at Steve, who had the same ridiculously adoring look on his face that Bucky was feeling, and Penny’s trainer commented that that was a good sign, and that had sealed the deal for them.

Penny is two, a big, soft German with deep brown eyes and long fur and a permanently wagging tail. She was affectionate when they first met her, and after they’ve bonded with her and worked on training and played with her and walked her and spent time understanding how to work with a service dog, she’s almost aggressively loving. Steve came every day; sometimes he participated in the activities to teach Penny that he is safe, that he is the person to go to if Bucky won’t wake up from a nightmare or respond when Penny is nuzzling him, that even though she’s trained to block men from getting too close to Bucky, it’s okay for Steve to touch him. They take her on walks to get her comfortable; Bucky does most of the petting and feeding and praise at first—she’s supposed to bond with him first, she has to know he’s the one she’s going to be working with. Steve didn’t mind. Steve watched them from a few feet away as Bucky tested out commands that Penny must have already known but that she did an exceptionally good job with anyway, or watched him feed her treats out of his hand until she licked happily at his face and made him laugh and found himself lost in adoration, overwhelmed by it. During one of the training days, Bucky had sat down next to Steve on a bench and leaned against him, and a moment later Penny had pranced up beside Bucky and leaned against his legs, nestling her head in his lap and cocking it until he reached over and rubbed her ears, and Steve had looked over at Bucky, grinning down at her with such love and such relief.

“You can take care of her when she’s not wearing her harness,” the trainer explained to Steve one evening, while they drank homemade cider she had provided. Penny was lying at their feet, tail swishing lazily back and forth in front of a fireplace. “Bucky should be the one to feed her and walk her for the first few weeks, especially when she’s in her harness, so she knows he’s her handler. But you’re allowed to care for her too; you can play with her and feed her and walk her as long as you aren’t taking her into stores and restaurants without Bucky. It’s good that she has more than one person loving her.”

Bucky had been relieved at that. He’d worried a little that by adopting Penny, he’d been blowing up some childhood dream he and Steve had of getting a dog together, unsure if Steve was allowed to have much interaction with her beyond feeding and petting her and if he would grow to resent that. Steve, who can gather Bucky’s thoughts from the faintest twitch of an eyebrow or a single muscle tightening in his face, had looked over at Bucky and squeezed his hand and smiled, soft and reassuring.

And then they have completed the training and they bring her home Steve drives with one hand, the other one holding Bucky’s, running his thumb over his knuckles absently. Bucky squeezes his hand, and Steve glances over. Bucky is fussing over Penny in the backseat, making sure she’s comfortable and happy. She is. She’s chewing a bone and lifting her head to lick Bucky’s hand when he reaches behind to rub her. Steve forces himself to focus on the road and not the unbelievable fortune of what’s beside him. Briefly and vividly, he thinks of being eighteen years old with his arm over Bucky’s shoulders, walking down some street or through a park, laughing, _we can start with a cat but as soon as we have a big enough place we’re getting a big dog_ and no, this is not how he pictured this, but still. He’s driving to his and Bucky’s beautiful home with Bucky and a dog. It is hard not to feel dizzy with the magnitude of his luck.

***

The first few days go smoothly. Penny is the best dog of all time, Bucky decides, and Steve agrees. She trots along with them in the house and outside, eager and excited, head stuck importantly in the air to look around. When Bucky sits on the couch, she throws herself beside him and puts her head into his lap. In public, she’s still and attentive and elegant looking, putting herself quickly between Bucky and men who get within a few feet, and then they will take her home and Bucky and Steve will throw a ball for her in the backyard and she scrambles after it, tail swishing happily through the air with endless energy. They put her bed just beneath theirs, but most nights she climbs up and curls into a ball on the end and neither of them have the heart to tell her otherwise. Besides, she is that much closer when the nightmares hit to nuzzle against him and lick his face and press into his chest to remind him that none of the people who hurt him ever had a big warm dog to kiss him.

Close to nothing goes wrong in the beginning. The first few days are too full of giddiness for anything to feel wrong; the first time something really does happen is six days after they bring her home in a diner. Steve is at the counter getting their order and Bucky is securing their booth when someone comes up to him.

“Can I pet her?” says a woman who is more than old enough to read the glaring white DO NOT PET letters on her vest. Bucky bites his lip, uncomfortable.

“She’s working,” he manages weakly. Steve is better at telling people that then he is, and he is big and intimidating enough that a cold look usually makes them back off.

The woman looks personally affronted. “I don’t see what she’s doing, exactly, that I can’t say hi.”

Bucky’s breath catches. By some miracle, Steve returns and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Everything okay?” he asks, eyeing her.

“Yeah,” Bucky says shakily. She turns haughtily. Bucky feels suddenly weak with shame and humiliation, and he presses a hand over his mouth.

“Hey, hey, baby.” Steve slides into the booth beside him and lays an arm over his shoulder. “It’s alright, love, it’s okay. What happened?”

Bucky opens his mouth to tell him, but then Penny places her worried head in his lap and begins to lick his hands and he manages a laugh. He rubs her ears for a few moments and breathes, then leans into Steve and explains quickly.

“What an asshole,” Steve says, glancing over his shoulder, presumably to tell her off. She’s gone, and Bucky is glad, he lays his head on Steve’s shoulder and rubs Penny’s head and mumbles, “Yeah.”

But even she is in the minority. Most people back off, guilty and apologetic, when they are told they can’t say hi to her, and many people leave her alone and really, the comfort of having Penny in public outweighs the downsides by miles.

“Hey,” Bucky tells her one night, flattening her ears. “You’re the best doggy I’ve ever met.” She sticks her tongue out happily.

***

Bucky lets Wanda and Scott meet her first, after they have finished moving and settled enough into the routine of taking care of a service dog that he doesn’t feel overwhelmed by the prospect of his friends seeing her. The four of them go to lunch in the East Village, and Wanda and Scott look elated when they see her.

“Oh, my god,” Wanda says, pulling Bucky into a quick, distracted hug. “She is the prettiest dog ever.”

“I know, right?” Bucky laughs. When Scott goes in to hug him, Penny nudges between them, blocking him, and Bucky smiles and says, “Sit, Pen, it’s alright, good girl.”

“She’s so fucking great, Buck,” Scott tells him. “I’m obsessed with her.” He’s giving Bucky a long, almost nostalgic look that makes him frown.

“What?” Instinctually, he leans closer to Steve.

“Nothing,” Scott says, and clears his throat. “I’m just really happy for you, bud.” He gives Bucky a quick Steve on the shoulder and says, “God, let’s eat.”

***

Making dinner a few nights later, Steve pulls Bucky into his arms, safe and steady, letting him lay his head on his shoulder. Bucky fits his hand into Steve’s and squeezes so they’re almost dancing, tiny steps back and forth. Penny, stationed at Bucky’s feet, chews a raw hide and flicks her tail happily.

“Hey, Buck?”

“Yeah?”

“This is our family.”

Bucky giggles, nuzzling into Steve’s neck, his skin warm. “Let’s make it bigger. Let’s get a cat.” He is only slightly joking.

“Slow your roll, dumbass. We’re barely used to this dog.”

“Penny, tell Steve he’s boring.”

Penny huffs. “How do you do that?” Steve asks him, and Bucky laughs again.

“She loves me,” Bucky replies.

“Her and me both.”

Bucky lifts his head enough to kiss Steve very lightly on the lips. “Pretty good family.”

“The best ever,” Steve agrees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr! you're all wonderful


	14. this is the worth while fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anon: Hi! First of all I'd like to say I absolutely love tell me how to breath, so yeah, thank you for giving us that. Second, if you're still taking prompts, I'd like to see a conversation between Bucky and Sam where Sam tells him how bad Steve was after they were forced apart, and then maybe ending with Bucky showering Steve with love an affection when he comes home. Thanks :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) love u! this was fun

August, 2014. Bucky is sitting in an outdoor bar with Steve, Sam, and Natasha, a trendy, overpriced restaurant in Red Hook looking over the East River, glittering with light-polluted sunset, cargo boats crossing lazily over their view. They have been there for about half an hour, tucked into a booth closest to the water, four emptied cups shoved into the middle, salt still shimmering on the rim of their margaritas. It’s unpleasantly warm but the breeze rising off the water is generous enough to allow them to forget. Around them, the nearly unsettling noise of other tipsy young adults, all laughing at one another’s stories and complaints, a sea of ponytails and Ray Bands and snapbacks. Even so, Bucky is happy. The margarita has kicked in just enough that he feels light but nowhere close to out of control, leaned happily into Steve’s side as the four of them argue over whether their eleventh grade English teacher had been sleeping with one of the math teachers.

“My sister saw them,” Nat is saying. “Her senior year, she walked past them making out on a picnic blanket in Prospect Park.”

“That could’ve been anyone,” Steve argues, snorting.

“Mm, they were always having lunch together,” Bucky pipes up.

“I gotta go with Buck and Nat on this one, Steve. One time Mr. Edgar opened his email in class and there were like, thirty from her.”

“It’s called having friends, Wilson,” Steve says, “maybe you’ve heard of it.”

“I have never sent you one email in my life.”

“We used to email,” Bucky tells him. “Remember? Before we started dating.”

“Operative word, before.”

“Were we not in love?”

Steve scoffs, rolls his eyes, and kisses the side of Bucky’s head. “You’re all ridiculous.” He’s grinning. “Another round?” he scans the table; nods from everyone.

“Get me a frosé,” Bucky says.

“That drink should be a crime,” Steve answers.

“Fuck you,” Bucky says cheerfully, laughing when Steve does.

“I’ll help you carry,” Nat says, and they depart, still smiling, leaving Bucky opposite Sam.

“You did that, you know.”

Bucky turns; Sam is talking to him. “What?”

Sam gives him a dazed, drunk smile. Out of all of them, he is the lightest weight, worse even than Bucky, and he mentioned earlier that he hadn’t eaten lunch. “He never smiled like that before you were back. Ever.”

Bucky’s cheeks flush. “Oh.”

Sam leans forward, body oscillating a little with alcohol, and braces a warm hand on Bucky’s shoulder, then hesitates. “Sorry. Is this okay?”

Bucky says, with a rush of gratitude for Sam, “Yeah. Thanks.”

Sam grins, steadies himself, and squeezes Bucky’s shoulder again. “You make him really happy, Buck. He was such a fucking mess without you, you know. I mean, we’d go out like this and he’d be on his third vodka tonic just like, staring blankly into space. It was really, really hard.” Sam shucks his head. “His apartment—I mean, you lived there, you know—it was all empty and bare and he just sat in there and did depressing paintings and smoked cigarettes. It was really, really bad.” None of this is new information to Bucky, exactly, but he has only heard it from Steve, who has always kind of softened these stories to make them seem more bearable, who has brushed if off with a choked laugh and then kissed Bucky on the cheek and told him he was better now. It makes him so impossibly sad to think of Steve, miserable and alone, whittling away at himself to feel anything less.

Beyond that, though, there is the anger at himself, all of the times he told himself that Steve was better off without him, was happier, was collecting his awards and magazine features and believing that losing Bucky was the best thing that ever happened to him. Steve, the objective most wonderful person in the world, should not have suffered ever, but the thought that he suffered over Bucky is too much to bear. Bucky, too stupid and selfish and scared to find Steve even when he could have, to show up to an exhibit of his and throw his arms around Steve and never let him go. An iron knot twists itself into Bucky’s chest. Sam is still looking at him, he realizes. He nods vaguely.

“But now he’s so good,” Sam says, straightening up. “You make him so happy, Bucky. You make all of us happy.”

Bucky bites his lip against the tremor in his throat, thinking about how humiliating it would be to cry. “Thanks, Sam. You’re pretty good yourself.”

Steve and Nat return then, taking careful steps with their too full drinks. Steve slides in next to Bucky, sets down his cold pink drink, and kisses his cheek.

“Thanks,” Bucky says, inching closer into his side.

Steve lays an arm over his shoulder. “Ordering that was embarrassing.”

“It’s _good_ ,” Bucky protests. 

Steve shakes his head and kisses Bucky clumsily on the nose. Across from him, Sam gives Bucky a small, knowing smile.

“Hey,” Bucky says later, once they are home and in sweats and making tea in their kitchen, surrounded by still unpacked boxes. He wraps his arms around Steve from behind and snuggles against his shoulder, washed in the familiar smell of Steve’s body wash and fabric softener.

“Hey.” Steve strains his head to kiss Bucky’s forehead. “Everything okay?”

“Mhm.” The kettle whines; Steve turns it down. “I just love you.”

“I love you, too,” Steve says. Bucky can hear him smiling.

“You’re the best person ever,” Bucky continues lazily, comfortably tired and warm from the drinks. “And you deserve all the happiness in the world.”

Steve turns so he can put his arms around Bucky. They look at each other, the room shimmery with the leftovers of the alcohol and the warm orange glow over the stove. “Oh, yeah?”

Bucky nods. “C’mere.” He pushes on tiptoes to hug Steve; Steve has to stoop a little, laughing, his face in Bucky’s neck. “I don’t like to think of you being sad, ever.”

He lets Steve straighten up, but they stay holding each other. “Well, I also don’t like to think of you being sad.” Bucky keeps holding him, clinging a little tighter, and Steve says, “Baby, I’m good. Did something happen?”

Bucky shakes his head. “Sam just told me you seem happy now, and you didn’t used to be. And I knew that. But I want you to be happy, always.”

Steve’s eyes are so soft. He tilts his forehead down to touch Bucky’s. “Well, I’m really happy now.”

“Good.” Bucky strains up to kiss each of Steve’s eyelids. “I love you so much. Even more than our cheating high school teachers love each other.”

“That’s not a good comparison,” Steve says, and sweeps Bucky into his arms with such enthusiasm that Bucky has to put his weight onto his toes. “I love you,” Steve tells him, after kissing him throughly, “you make me so happy.”

“You make me happy too,” Bucky tells him, too tired and heavy from the drinks to think of something clever to tease him with. “You’re the best, Stevie.”

Steve kisses him on the forehead. “Well, right back at you.” He holds Bucky a minute, tethered to the ground by the weight of his luck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cafelesbian on tumblr

**Author's Note:**

> yeah so i hope u like people have seemed to be into these tiny things i post which makes me really happy :) leave a comment if u wanna make my day
> 
> cafelesbian on tumblr where you can request these !!! i'll take anything and i will most likely write it at some point i literally love getting requests lol please don't be shy
> 
> also to the person who requested this one i have ur other one and it will get posted love u


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